Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — WALES

Kidney Transplant Operations

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what estimate he has made of the shortage of kidneys for transplant operations in Wales.

The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. David Gibson-Watt): No firm estimate is possible. Currently transplant operations are taking place in Wales at the rate of about 25 a year. Some 70 patients are being treated by haemo-dialysis of whom about 45 are being considered for transplant operations.

Mr. Dalyell: Is the Minister of State aware that the petition being organised by Mr. Gabe Wilkinson and his friends

is of interest far wider in the United Kingdom than Wales? Will the hon. Gentleman use his influence to look at the petition and perhaps use his influence in the Cabinet with a view to amending the Human Tissue Act?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: My right hon. and learned Friend will consider the petition when it is to hand. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for telling us about it.

Sir G. Nabarro: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that the Renal Transplantation Bill, in the last days of the last Parliament, failed by only a small margin to reach the Statute Book? Will he advise his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services of the importance of that aspect for dealing with this problem?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Yes, but we take the view that legislation is not the right way to tackle this difficult and sensitive subject. In our view, persuasion and education are the better courses to pursue.

Mr. George Thomas: Is the Minister of State aware that Wales has been leading the field in this matter and has a very good record? Is the hon. Gentleman further aware that the Government must show greater interest in getting enough people to be available for kidney transplants? The petition is receiving massive support in the Principality. I hope that we can expect as much from the Government.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: That is true. We are considering whether an effective and acceptable donor recruitment scheme can be devised.

Council Housing (Sale)

Mr. Roy Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list those local authorities in Wales which sold council houses in the past 12 months showing how many houses were involved with each respective local authority.

Mr. McBride: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will now announce the total sales of council houses and flats in Wales from 1st July, 1970, to the nearest convenient date, naming the local authorities which have agreed to sell such houses, with the number of such houses sold by local authorities which have agreed to sell houses or flats and the local authorities which have decided not to sell their houses or flats.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I have been notified of the sale of 642 council dwellings between 1st July, 1970, and 31st January, 1972; 548 were sold during the last twelve months of that period. Details will be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
Local authorities are not required to inform me of their policies on the sale of council houses.

Mr. Hughes: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the number of local authorities

Local Authority
Built pre-war
Built post-war
Total
Total
Grand Total




1.7.70–31.1.71
1.2.71–31.1.72
1.7.70–31.1.71
1.2.71–31.1.72
1.7.70–31.1.71
1.2.71–31.1.72
1.7.70–31.1.72


Brecknock RDC
…
—
2
—
18
—
20
20


Crickhowell RDC
…
—
—
—
3
—
3
3


Aberystwyth RDC
…
1
1
—
—
1
1
2


Burry Port UDC
…
—
1
5
1
5
2
7


Flint BC
…
—
2
—
—
—
2
2


Rhyl UDC
…
1
1
—
3
1
4
5


Cardiff CBC
…
8
61
33
171
41
232
273


Caerphilly UDC
…
2
2
—
—
2
2
4


Maesteg UDC
…
1
—
1
1
2
1
3


Mountain Ash UDC
…
—
1
—
—
—
1
1


Penarth UDC
…
—
4
1
6
1
10
11


Cowbridge RDC
…
2
—
2
1
4
1
5


Gower RDC
…
—
1
—
1
—
2
2


Neath RDC
…
10
22
—
—
10
22
32


Pontardawe RDC
…
—
—
5
4
5
4
9


Barmouth UDC
…
—
2
1
2
1
4
5


Dolgellau RDC
…
—
5
1
—
1
5
6


Newport CBC
…
—
—
12
199
12
199
211


Abergavenny BC
…
—
1
—
—
—
1
1


Abertillery UDC
…
2
1
—
—
2
—
2


Blaenavon UDC
…
1
—
—
—
1
—
1

selling council houses has now been reduced by at least one due to the recent decision of the Newport Borough Council? Is the hon. Gentleman aware, further, that that authority came to the conclusion that it was not economic to sell council houses for £3,000 and to build new ones for £6,000, especially with more than 2,000 families on the waiting list, many of them in a desperate plight?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: The decision whether to sell houses rests with individual councils. Wales is well known as a land of home-owners. More than 50 per cent. of our people own their homes, and the present Government are in favour of extending that.

Mr. McBride: Is the Minister of State aware that a council house in South Wales was offered last week at £4,500, the offer being tenable for only three months? Is not this an exorbitant price for a time-depreciated asset? Is the hon. Gentleman further aware that uncontrolled sales of council houses do not help waiting lists but create problems of resale abuses? It is socially wrong. Surely the Government should do something about it.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Those are the hon. Gentleman's views. But the view of the Government is that the sale of council houses should be encouraged. It is up to councils to take their own line on this.

Following are the details:

Local Authority
Built pre-war
Built post-war
Total
Total
Grand Total



1.1.70–31.1.71
1.2.71–31.1.72
1.1.70–31.1.71
1.2.71–31.1.72
1.7.70–31.1.71
1.2.71–31.1.72
1.7.70–31.1.72


Nantyglo and Blaina UDC
—
—
—
1
—
1
1


Abergavenny RDC
—
—
—
2
—
2
2


Magor and St. Mellons RDC
2
1
1
11
3
12
15


Monmouth RDC
—
1
—
—
—
1
1


Haverfordwest BC
—
3
—
13
—
16
16


Pembroke RDC
—
—
1
—
1
—
1


Painscastle RDC
1
—
—
—
1
—
1



31
111
63
437
94
548
642


Number of local authorities … … … 28

Kinmel Camp

Sir A. Myer: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what plans his Department has for the use of Kinmel Camp when the Ministry of Defence ceases its activities there.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Thomas): I understand that no final decision has been taken to close the camp.

Sir A. Meyer: Will my right hon. and learned Friend bear in mind that this camp provides employment for a great many civilians locally? It is extremely well-equipped. If the Ministry of Defence decides that it does not want it, it could serve either for retraining purposes or in connection with the raising of the school leaving age.

Mr. Thomas: As I said to my hon. Friend, no final decision has been taken. The matter is under review. If a decision is taken to close the camp, it will be offered for other purposes.

Schools (Official Visits)

Mr. Barry Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many schools he proposes to visit officially from April to December, 1972.

Mr. Peter Thomas: As many as I can.

Mr. Jones: I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that reply. Does he agree that his record of school visiting in 1971 was, to say the least, paltry in that he visited only five schools during that year? Secondly, in any visits that the right hon. and learned Gentleman makes this year will he promise to go to as many nursery school units as possible and urge his Cabinet colleagues to

provide more nursery schools for children in Wales?

Mr. Thomas: Last year I visited a very wide range of schools: nursery, primary, special, and two comprehensive schools. It is not the number of schools but the range which matters. On the second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, he will recall the reply which I gave him a fortnight ago.

Regional Employment Premium

Mr. Roderick: asked the Secretary of State for Wales by what methods he intends to estimate the effects of the withdrawal of the regional employment premium in Wales.

Mr. Peter Thomas: The Government will assess this in the context of other regional measures.

Mr. Roderick: Is the Secretary of State telling us that he has made no assessement of the likely effects of abandoning this policy? Does he share the concern of the Development Corporation of Wales and the Welsh Council about its likely abandonment?

Mr. Thomas: I am fully aware that representations have been made about R.E.P. The hon. Gentleman knows that these and other matters will be taken into account in our review of regional strategy.

Mr. Kinnock: Is not that a very vague answer after 20 months of Tory Government and after the production of an excellent document by the Welsh Council which had both criticism to make of the withdrawal of R.E.P. and, indeed, some useful suggestions about its replacement? Has the right hon. and learned Gentleman turned his mind towards the suggestion of a tax-related premium which would


assist with the employment of labour in Wales?

Mr. Thomas: The hon. Gentleman knows that a review of regional policy is going on at the moment and that these and other matters and representations will be taken into consideration.

Disabled Persons (Training)

Mr. Probert: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will agree to the issuing of vehicles for those with some, though severely limited, walking ability if they are needed to take the occupants to a course of training to become sufficiently efficient to take on a job.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: This matter will fall within the ambit of the inquiry into the needs of those who are immobilised by severe disablement which was announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services on 21st February.

Mr. Probert: Does the Minister of State agree that the present ruling is grossly unfair, particularly in the case which is now before him concerning a young man who has suffered the amputation of a leg and arm on the same side of the body who is anxious to equip himself to take a full part in society by becoming fully employed and yet is debarred from assistance because of a bureaucratic ruling that he is mobile? How does this bureaucratic ruling envisage this young man, for example, getting on or off a bus or taking short walks without acute discomfort? Knowing the hon. Gentleman's sympathy for this type of person, may I ask him to have another sympathetic look at the matter?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the way he put his question. He refers to a letter which he wrote to me about a constituent in Penrhiwceiber on 6th March. I shall be sending him a reply within the next few days.

"Wales: Employment and the Economy"

Mr. Alec Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what action he pro poses to implement the proposals contained in the Welsh Council's recent publication "Wales: Employment and the Economy".

Mr. Peter Thomas: As I made clear in the course of the debate on unemployment on 9th March, these proposals will be studied carefully.

Mr. Jones: Is the Secretary of State aware that this publication contains 16 recommendations, some advocating a return to the policies of the last Government and some new policies, designed to reduce unemployment in Wales? Will he now tell us whether he or the Government have yet reached any conclusions on the report; if not, why not; and when we are to have a real statement from him on it?

Mr. Peter Thomas: The recommendations of the Welsh Council were many and varied. The first was the continuation of the present reflationary policies of this Government. The Council's report has only recently been published and it will be looked at in the context of budgetary measures and, indeed, our review of regional policy.

Mr. George Thomas: Will the Secretary of State tell us the date on which this report reached the Welsh Office, how long he has been considering it and whether he will arrange, as a matter of urgency, to inform the House and, therefore, the people of Wales what credence the Government intend to give to the report of the Welsh Council?

Mr. Peter Thomas: That is a surprising question from an ex-Secretary of State, because he knows that the Welsh Council is a body to advise me. The contents of the report were known to me before it was published. The Welsh Council asked whether I would agree to its publication and it was published because I agreed.

Coal Industry Dispute (School Closures)

Mr. Coleman: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many schools in Wales were closed due to a shortage of coal during the recent strike in the mining industry; and how many children were affected by these closures.

Mr. Peter Thomas: The largest number of schools closed at any one time during the strike is estimated to have been 228, affecting about 90,000 children.

Mr. Coleman: Is the Secretary of State aware that in some Welsh secondary


schools pupils have been deprived of their education for as much as four weeks during this period? Is not this a further example of the disastrous tenure at No. 10 Downing Street of the present Prime Minister during which time 1½ million people have been deprived of their employment, children have been deprived of their free school milk and, it seems, the British people will be deprived of their sovereignty too?

Mr. Thomas: It is a further example of hardship which is bound to arise when there is a strike of that nature.

Mr. Gower: Is it not a fact that, at any rate in South Wales, many local authorities have attempted to help the coal industry by using coal central heating, and so on, and to that extent they have made schools more susceptible during such a strike?

Mr. Thomas: That is perfectly true. Those authorities which were dependent on coal for heating schools were the most vulnerable during the strike.

Mr. Fred Evans: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman ignore the question by his hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower), which is another disguised attempt on the part of hon. Gentlemen on the Government side to try to inflict their venom and malice on the miners, because they were beaten by them, by inciting organisations to abandon the use of coal? In the interests of the people of Wales and in the interest of preventing a further massive increase in unemployment, will he urge upon his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry that this kind of venom has to stop and that, in any policy for fuel and power, coal must have a major place, as otherwise Wales will suffer bitterly?

Mr. Thomas: I cannot possibly ignore my hon. Friend's question. There was no venom in it. My hon. Friend asked a factual question. It was perfectly true and I agreed with him.

Sixth Formers

Mr. Gower: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many pupils were in the sixth forms of Welsh schools at the latest convenient date; and how this figure compares with the number 10 years ago.

Mr. Peter Thomas: In January, 1971, there were 16,625 sixth form pupils in maintained Welsh secondary schools compared with 9,547 pupils in January, 1961.

Mr. Gower: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that that is a most encouraging figure? As the sixth form in some schools is a particular glory of the system of State education, will he always keep this matter under careful examination?

Mr. Thomas: Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. In 1971 53 per cent. of 15-year-old pupils stayed on at school beyond the statutory school leaving age compared with 40 per cent. in 1961.

Mr. Roderick: In view of the Secretary of State's support for the policy of the Secretary of State for Education and Science to restrict building to primary schools, may I ask whether he expects this expansion to continue; or is he relying on youth unemployment to be the recruiting sergeant?

Mr. Thomas: I cannot understand the hon. Gentleman's question. My policy has been to increase building, in particular, primary schools. Indeed, there has been a considerable increase in school building since I became Secretary of State.

Mid-Wales

Mr. Elystan Morgan: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will now extend the remit of the Mid-Wales Development Corporation to include other growth towns in Mid-Wales.

Mr. Peter Thomas: I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave him on 31st January.—[Vol. 830, c. 11.]

Mr. Morgan: Does not the Secretary of State agree that that reply was singularly unhelpful? It is obvious that the Government have no policy for the development of mid-Wales. With the reorganisation of local government, the Mid-Wales Industrial Development Association will be split among three counties and in most of the towns there will be no body responsible for development. There should be an extension of the corporation under Section 1


of the New Towns Act, 1965, or there will be no development at all.

Mr. Thomas: I disagree with the hon. Gentleman that my reply was not helpful. If he does me the courtesy of looking at the reply that I gave on 31st January, he will find not only that it was helpful but that it set out the varied and important policies being pursued by the Government. As to the other part of his question, I realise that the proposed reorganisation of local government will have an effect on the Mid-Wales Industrial Development Association but I do not accept that the creation of strong local authority units will inhibit the development of industry in Mid-Wales; rather the contrary.

Farm Price Review

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what is the capital injection into Welsh agriculture consequent upon the Price Review.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: The net value to Welsh farmers of the measures taken following the 1972 Annual Review is of the order of £4 million to £5 million. This will provide a substantial cash injection to encourage further investment and greater production.

Mr. Edwards: May I congratulate my hon. Friend on a review that will increase the pace of expansion and be of particular benefit to Welsh livestock producers without putting up the price of food in the shops? Can my hon. Friend say specifically what effect he thinks the review will have on the farm improvement scheme?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said. It is much the best review that we have had for many years, and it will be very well received by Welsh farmers. Improvement grants are already running at a good figure and we believe that as a result of the review improvements will increase even further.

Mr. Elystan Morgan: Can the hon. Gentleman say what part of the £20 million cut in fertilisers will apply to Wales and whether any specific studies were made of the special needs of Wales with its thin, leached, sour soils before this decision about fertilisers was made in the Price Review?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: The answer to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question is about £1 million, or just over it, but at the same time, as my original answer showed, an increase in net income of £4 million to £5 million is very considerable, indeed. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's last question is that our soils are in many parts shallow and poor but we believe that this review favours the livestock part of the industry very much indeed.

Rural Wales

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what further policies he has in mind for rural Wales.

Mr. Peter Thomas: The Government's policies are already designed to bring about continuing progress in the rural areas of Wales.

Mr. Hughes: Does the Secretary of State recall that when the Government decided to dismantle rural development boards about 20 months ago a firm undertaking was given that a new policy for the rural areas would be substituted? Will he be good enough to tell the House when the new policy will be announced?

Mr. Thomas: As I mentioned to the right hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend, I announced in the Welsh Grand Committee the Government's policy for mid-Wales. As to rural Wales, Government policies relating to agriculture, tourism, roads, water, mineral exploration, and so on, have all had positive effects on those areas.

Statutory Bodies (Nominations)

Mr. John: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many statutory bodies there are in Wales filled in whole or in part by his nominations.

Mr. Peter Thomas: Fifty-eight operating solely in Wales, including 10 for which I have a shared responsibility.

Mr. John: Does not that answer encourage the right hon. and learned Gentleman to devote some thought during the pre-Crowther period to how these nominated bodies can be brought under democratic control?

Mr. Thomas: Many of the bodies which I have mentioned consist largely of members appointed by local authorities.

Mr. Kinnock: Will the Secretary of State appreciate that one of the bodies which comes into this question is the Welsh Council? When so many busy men are giving so much valuable time to serve Wales, is it not a discourtesy to them, as appears to be the case after hearing the right hon. and learned Gentleman's answers and reading his comments in last week's debate, to take no notice of what they have said about what is needed for the Welsh economy?

Mr. Thomas: The hon. Gentleman really must not say that my comments indicate that I am going to take no notice at all of advice that is given to me by the Welsh Council. I have already told the House that its recommendations will be carefully considered. They are important recommendations, and they are being considered in the context of the review to which I have referred the House.

Straying Animals (Protection of Children)

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:

FRED EVANS: To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what progress he has made in his consideration of steps to protect children in the valley communities of South Wales from injury by animals straying into built-up areas from neighbouring hill areas.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Fred Evans, to ask Question No. 17.

Mr. Evans: Will the hon. Gentleman accept that I—

Hon. Members: Ask the Question.

Mr. Evans: I am sorry—Question No. 17.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: The working party is still receiving evidence and making site visits.

Mr. Evans: Will the hon. Gentleman accept that I anticipated his answer and also the fact that he has had a committee considering this matter for about 12 meetings? Will he accept that while we on this side of the House realise that this is a long and intractable problem, we take the view that it is high time we got some results? Will the hon. Gentleman further accept that in my constituency there have

been four recent cases of this kind, including one a week ago last Saturday when a four-year-old boy was savagely attacked by wild ponies and kicked in the head in an area which could have led to the loss of his sight? This happened in the middle of a built-up, modern housing estate. Will the hon. Gentleman further accept, in all seriousness, that unless something is done about this very quickly, there will inevitably be a fatality among children?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. This is a serious business, and that is why this Government—not the previous one—set up the working party. The hon. Gentleman spoke about anticipating things. May I tell him that he and his right hon. Friends could have done more about this in the past. We intend to do more about it in the future.

Mr. McBride: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, while the consideration proceeds, in Swansea depredation by roaming horses continues and serious damage will be done there in the future, as it has been in the past? In another direction, will the hon. Gentleman appreciate that some adventurous-minded children, who will ride these wild ponies, will inevitably meet with serious injury and that it is in an attempt to forestall this that we hope the Government will come forward with proposals?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. This is an important matter in Swansea, and when I visited there with the working party we were told all the details of the problem. I assure all hon. Members that we shall not take any longer than we have to, but this is a complicated business and needs a bit of time.

Rhuddlan Bypass

Sir A. Meyer: asked the Secretary of State for Wales whether he will make early provision for the road replacement of Rhuddlan road bridge and for realigning the junction of the A525 and 547 at this point.

Mr. Peter Thomas: A scheme to bypass this junction and the old railway bridge is in my principal road programme for a start in 1972–73. An extension of the scheme which will bypass the river bridge is under consideration.

Sir A. Meyer: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that that reply will give relief in my constituency? Does he not consider that there is a case for reviewing priorities in these matters as vast sums of money have been spent on improving the existing dual carriageway between St. Asaph and Rhuddlan whereas the realignment of the bridge is surely a more important task?

Mr. Thomas: I accept that there is some urgency, and a 75 per cent. grant will be issued as soon as the county council is ready to proceed with the first part of the scheme which I have mentioned.

River Dee (Barrage)

Mr. Barry Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will make a further statement on the Dee barrage proposals.

Mr. Peter Thomas: My right hon Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and I are proceeding with our evaluation of this multi-purpose project. There are many matters to be considered and we are not yet ready to announce conclusions.

Mr. Jones: Is it not a fact that the Cabinet is split on this matter?

Mr. Thomas: No. Sir.

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: In the event of this scheme materialising, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give an assurance that there will be equality of control as between both sides of the border and that he is instituting a sociological and economic inquiry into the possible consequences of this? Will he say that the water which will be made available for consumption for various reasons as a result of this scheme will make it unnecessary in future to drown Welsh valleys?

Mr. Thomas: These are all very important matters which have to be considered. It gives some indication of the complexity of the whole thing and the reason why very careful thought has to be given before decisions are taken.

Housing Finance Bill

Mr. McBride: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many Welsh

local authorities have intimated their intention to increase the rents of their houses and flats by 50p per week on 1st April, 1972, under the provisions of the Housing Finance Bill; and which Welsh local authorities which, by reason of not imposing the above increase, will, by the terms of the Bill, have to impose a mandatory increase in the rents of their houses and flats of £1 per week on 1st October, 1972.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Local authorities are not required to provide me with this information and none has done so.

Mr. McBride: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in that answer he has dodged his responsibility to Wales? Is he aware that this affects 270,000 local authority dwellings and therefore, at three persons to a house, 800,00 Welsh people? If we assume that half the rents are increased in April and half in October, this means that over £10,400,000 will be taken out of the Welsh economy, making nonsense of the Prime Minister's constant inflation theory. Is not this a clear infringement of the rights of the people, inducing future wage claims? Does not the hon. Gentleman think it a disgrace to be part of a Government which today will seek to impose a timetable on discussion of the Bill?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I do not know where the hon. Member has got his figures from but I would not accept them. I would only add that local authorities are not obliged to make rent increases before the Housing Finance Bill becomes an Act. However, if they make any increases between 1st October, 1971, and 30th September, 1972, these could count as increases for the purposes of the Bill.

Mr. McBride: On a point of order. May I point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that the retrospective legal provisions of the Bill require increases to be made on 1st April, before it will be enacted?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for me.

Mr. Alec Jones: When the Minister for Housing and Construction can announce in Committee the level of fair rents for many districts in England, why is it that the Minister responsible for housing in Wales cannot give us an idea of the level of fair rents in Wales?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: As I said in my original answer, local authorities are not required to give me this information, and none has done so.

Mr. McBride: On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I will seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment as early as possible.

Home Improvement Grants

Mr. Alec Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will seek to amend the Housing Act, 1971, in order to enable local authorities in development areas to pay the 75 per cent. grant for home improvement grants if they are started, as opposed to completed, by 23rd June. 1973.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I have noted the hon. Member's point, but the purpose of the Act was to get improvement work for the areas concerned brought forward and completed as quickly as possible.

Mr. Jones: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that failure to extend the deadline for the payment of the 75 per cent. grants will mean unfair treatment between one claimant and another, will delay housing improvements and will certainly affect local authorities which are anxiously trying to get on with general improvement areas? Will he at least call a conference of the local authorities in Wales to discuss their very real fears in this respect?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: As I said, I have noted the hon. Member's point. Of course, the 1971 Act has been designed to produce a short, sharp campaign of housing modernisation to give much-needed help to development and intermediate areas.

Sir A. Meyer: Is my hon. Friend aware that the area of home improvement grants is yet another in which Flintshire is discriminated against by virtue of not being part of the Welsh development area?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I cannot make any useful comment on that point.

Mr. Roy Hughes: Does the hon. Gentleman now agree that the Government should concede that it would be in the best interests of owner-occupiers, of tenants and of local authorities if the

scheme were extended beyond June, 1973? Will he not further appreciate that builders could then plan their later requirements accordingly and thus help to solve the present chronic unemployment position in Wales?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I note the strength of view on this point from several hon. Members. I cannot add to the answer I have given this afternoon.

Venereal Diseases

Mr. Gower: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what increase in the incidence of venereal diseases has occurred in Wales in the last year and during the past 10 years, respectively; and what are his proposals for dealing with the problems which have arisen.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Five per cent. in 1970, the latest year for which complete figures are available and 77 per cent. over the 10-year period. The general increase in these diseases is a matter of national concern. Steps are being taken to increase publicity and health education, improve the tracing of contacts and encourage early diagnosis and treatment.

Mr. Gower: Is my hon. Friend aware that doctors in South Wales have expressed deep anxiety about this and also about the fact that a form of the disease has emerged which appears to be unaffected by certain antibiotic treatment? Is he aware that some doctors have expressed concern that this appears to have much less attention than matters like abortion?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I was not aware of that last point. I can assure my hon. Friend that this is a matter of considerable concern to the health authorities. I am very glad that my hon. Friend has raised this matter in the House today.

Sewerage

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what steps he is taking to ensure that modern sewage treatment schemes are given priority in the allocation of resources in Wales.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: The authorities concerned are given every encouragement by my Department to improve their sewerage systems and sewage treatment plant.


Some £50 million will be spent on such schemes over the next five years compared with £33 million in the last five years.

Mr. Edwards: I thank my hon. Friend for the welcome news that additional funds are being made available. Is he aware that many of us feel that an even higher priority should be given to this matter and that it is totally unacceptable in this day and age that raw sewage should be pumped into the sea? Can he also assure me that his Department will consider with all urgency the two schemes currently before it—namely, those for Fishguard and Haverford west?

Mr. Gibson-Wart: The Working Party on Sewage Disposal accepted that crude sewage could be discharged to sea only after preliminary treatment and through properly sited outfalls. As for the two schemes my hon. Friend mentions, which are at present awaiting action by the Welsh Office, this is mainly on engineering investigation and there will be no unnecessary delay.

Rehousing Need

Mr. Elystan Morgan: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will ascertain from each local government housing authority in Wales the number of people in its area whom they regard to be in serious need of rehousing.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: No, Sir. Estimates of this type are of prime concern to the housing authorities themselves, to be used as the basis for framing their proposals to meet the rehousing needs of their areas.

Mr. Morgan: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that it is part of his general ministerial duty to acquaint himself with these figures? Is it not a harsh and senseless irony that while substantial sums are spent upon improvements to holiday cottages these housing lists lengthen miserably?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Local authorities have a statutory duty to review the housing needs of their districts from time to time and to formulate proposals for dealing with them. I certainly encourage local authorities and give them every help in carrying out their housing functions, and I shall continue to do so.

Geriatric Beds (Neath)

Mr. Coleman: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what proposals he has to increase the number of hospital beds in the Neath area for geriatric occupation; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: A new geriatric unit of 30 beds will shortly be completed at Cymla Hospital, Neath.

Mr. Coleman: But is the hon. Gentleman aware that even with this welcome addition, which was provided as a result of the help of the Friends of the Neath Hospitals, there are increasing difficulties in the provision of geriatric accommodation in Neath? These increasing difficulties are being experienced by medical practitioners, consultants and the hospital management committee. Will the hon. Gentleman initiate discussions with the Welsh Hospital Board which will mean that we shall have greater provision of this kind of accommodation in the Neath hospitals in the near future?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I share the hon. Member's concern about this matter. Although the number of geriatric beds in the area has risen from 69 in 1967 to 125 after the Cymla Hospital is built, it is still rather under the average. I accept what he says about the work done by the Friends of the Neath Hospitals. I am sure he will welcome the additional moneys which the Government have made available for the long-stay sector, which will help the geriatric services. Discussions such as the hon. Member asked about go on all the time.

Mr. Probert: This acute shortage also exists in my constituency, which is a neighbouring constituency to Neath. Only this morning at 8.30 I was in touch with the medical officer of health concerning two very tragic geriatric cases in my constituency.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: It is generally known throughout the country that the demand for geriatric services is growing.

Operation Eyesore

Mr. John: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many applications have been made for grants to clear up eyesores pursuant to his recent announcement.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Applications for grant towards the cost of treating 236 sites have so far been received by the Welsh Office Derelict Land Unit under the new arrangements.

Mr. John: Since the Minister laid such store upon the effect on employment of the new grants, welcome as they are, will he tell us what effect the sanctioning of these schemes would have on unemployment?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I cannot give specific figures but it is extremely encouraging that we have 236 sites already in answer to Operation Eyesore. The Welsh Office Derelict Land Unit has, inspected sites in the areas of 15 local authorities and the grant approvals are being issued.

Lead and Cadmium Pollution (South Wales)

Mr. Roy Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what further action he is taking as a result of the traces of lead and cadmium found in samples of sea water recently collected off the South Wales coast.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: As my right hon Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food told the hon. Member on 14th February, his Department is monitoring for heavy metals, particularly lead and cadmium, in commercial fish and shellfish in the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel as part of a national survey. In addition the Welsh Office is keeping in touch with the various bodies, including universities, which are engaged in research into pollution problems off the South Wales coast.

Mr. Hughes: Are not these persistent reports rather disturbing and should not the Government make greater efforts to trace the source of pollution? Can they not make it clear that the health and well-being of people are far more important than the narrow pursuit of profit?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: This is certainly a most important matter. It is expected that the report of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on the lead content of commercially-caught fish will be published in April and the report on cadmium in the autumn. The report on

the pollution problems in the Severn Estuary is being prepared by the Government's Sea Water Pollution Research Laboratory and will be available shortly.

Weekly Wage

Mr. Roderick: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what is the average weekly wage per person in Wales for the last available week.

Mr. Peter Thomas: The full information requested is not available. The latest figures relate to October, 1971, when the average weekly earnings of male manual workers in Wales, aged 21 and over, were £31·10. This figure is slightly higher than the comparable Great Britain figure. The latest figures for the earnings of female workers and non-manual male workers relate to April, 1971, when they were lower than the comparable Great Britain figures.

Mr. Roderick: Can the Secretary of State say what factors have led to the change in the situation so that male workers in Wales had much higher average earnings in October than workers in the United Kingdom as a whole? This is a trend which has changed considerably. Over industry as a whole there is a lower average. Would not the Secretary of State agree that if we are to suffer lower wages, any rises in the cost of living will bear more heavily on us in Wales?

Mr. Thomas: The latest figures relate to manual male workers and there is no doubt that they are slightly higher than the national figure, but the average weekly earnings of women, boys, girls and non-manual workers in Wales tend to be lower than the national average.

Mr. Gower: Whereas in Wales average earnings in manufacturing industries are higher than the average for the United Kingdom, the average earnings over the whole of Wales are lower than in many parts of the United Kingdom because we lack business and professional employment which is present in the Midlands and the South-East.

Mr. Thomas: What my hon. Friend says is about right. A large percentage of male workers in Wales are manual workers, something like 70 per cent., which is much higher than in the United Kingdom generally.

Mr. Kinnock: While the figure for earnings is marginally higher than in the rest of the United Kingdom, the average figure for unemployment in Wales is grossly higher than the United Kingdom average. Will the Secretary of State produce specific suggestions for cutting down unemployment in Wales?

Mr. Thomas: During the debate last week these figures were gone into in some detail. The percentage of unemployment in Wales has been higher than the national average for many years.

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS (DURATION AND COST)

Mr. Arthur Lewis: asked the Attorney-General whether he is aware of the concern felt by the taxpayer in general, and those seeking legal redress in particular, at the long time which ensues before legal cases are resolved, and of the fact that delay in proceedings can prove a profitable venture for those connected with the legal profession; and what action he has taken or intends taking to speedup the whole of the judiciary
system.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Geoffrey Howe): My noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is as much concerned on humanitarian as on financial grounds at delays in bringing cases to trial. It was to speed this process that the Government introduced the sweeping reforms brought about by the Courts Act which is now in operation. I cannot accept that it is in the interests of the legal profession or anyone else for there to be delays in the administration of justice.

Mr. Lewis: I am receiving no refresher brief. For 25 years I have heard Governments say that they will do something about it but things are getting worse. Will not the Solicitor-General support the Lord Chancellor in seeing that action is taken? Will he set up a committee of ordinary trade unionists to consider whether these people can operate on some kind of piece-work bonus payment? When workers take a long time over their work there are screams of protest in this House, but lawyers seem to get away with it.

The Solicitor-General: The hon. Member is wrong to suggest that the matter is being treated with indifference. As a

result of the Courts Act and consequent upon that, the Lord Chancellor has taken and is taking steps to increase substantially the number of courts available in the London area. They increased by 15 since he came into office, and another 16 courtrooms will be brought into use by the end of this year. The problem of delay is being tackled vigorously and specially by the circuit administrator for the South-Eastern Circuit at the personal request of the Lord Chancellor.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Is it not the case that, bad though we may be, we are a good deal better than we were and we are far better than any other civilised country?

The Solicitor-General: My hon. and learned Friend is quite right. That fact was remarked upon by the members of the visiting deputation from America who came here last year.

Sir Elwyn Jones: As the implementation of the Beeching Commission recommendations has, or should have had, the effect of eliminating a good deal of wasted judicial time, can the Solicitor-General yet give an indication of what impact the implementation of the Beeching proposals has had on this grave problem of delay which concerns not only the laymen but lawyers too?

The Solicitor-General: As I have already indicated the Government entirely share the concern about this matter but, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman will appreciate, the effects of the Beeching Commission Report really started only from the beginning of this year. Statistics are only now beginning to come in but the number of courts available in London has been and is being substantially increased. Delays in the London and South-Eastern areas should begin to yield to that change quickly. The position outside London is nothing like as serious.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: asked the Attorney-General whether he will give for the longest and most convenient stated period of time as much detailed information as may be readily available giving the actual and/or estimated time taken for cases to go through all their legal stages; how many cases are outstanding which first commenced before


January, 1972; and what on average is the cost of court cases in general and of High Court cases in particular.

The Solicitor-General: The average waiting time between committal by magistrates' courts and hearing by the Crown Court is about five months in London and two months elsewhere. It is possible to bring defended Queen's Bench actions on for hearing within six to eight weeks of the solicitors certifying that they are ready to proceed.
On 25th February, 1972, there were 2,646 cases awaiting trial at the Crown Court in London which had been committed before 1st January. In the provinces there were 3,893 outstanding committals, 1,882 Queen's Bench actions awaited trial in London on 3rd March, 1972, and 1,118 in the provinces on 25th February.
The average cost of legally aided cases tried at assizes and quarter sessions in 1970–71 was £101·89.

Mr. Lewis: May I express my thanks to the Solicitor-General for his very detailed reply? Do not these figures show that something should be done? Is it not terrible that people should be kept waiting five months by a magistrates' court before they know how serious is the outcome? Ordinary people worry about these things and to be kept waiting five months, even though it may appear trivial to some, is a worry. Perhaps the Solicitor-General could consider setting up a Select Committee of the House to see what could be done to expedite these issues.

The Solicitor-General: The hon. Gentleman must not assume that it is only ordinary people who are concerned about this. My noble Friend and my right hon. and learned Friend share concern about the long delay between committal and trial in the London area. It is for just that reason that the Courts Act reforms have been passed, that all the efforts are being made to produce the additional courtroom accommodation I have mentioned and that the circuit administrator for the South-Eastern Circuit is undertaking a special and urgent review of the position in London and the South-East.

Sir G. Nabarro: While I do not wish to comment adversely at this stage on these deplorable figures, many of which

are avoidable, may I ask my hon. and learned Friend to apply himself to the disgraceful delays in ordinary administrative processes, such as obtaining a transcript of a case going to appeal, for which I have been waiting for seven long weeks and I cannot get any change out of the courts or anyone else?

The Solicitor-General: My noble Friend is aware of, among other things, the recurrent complaints about delays in obtaining transcripts and has for that reason also been taking action on that front. The number of transcripts outstanding in cases going to the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, a year ago was 1,083. This year it has been reduced to less than half that figure. The importance of the matter is not underrated and it is being tackled.

Mr. Lipton: What impact have the recent changes had in reducing the backlog of cases at the Old Bailey? I know of people in Brixton prison for months at a time on remand awaiting trial at the Old Bailey.

The Solicitor-General: The particular problem at the Old Bailey is part of the general problem of securing early trial of cases in the London area. It is one of the problems to which special attention is being given. Its importance to the hon. Gentleman is in no sense underrated but we must bear in mind that in the first two months of this year there has been an unprecedented number of committals for trial, amounting to almost 1,605 in the London area in those two months alone.

Sir Elwyn Jones: It seems to be conceded that five months is an intolerable time between committal and the trial of criminal cases in the London magistrates' courts. Will the Solicitor-General give sympathetic consideration to the proposals now being made for an extension of bail for those awaiting trial? One of the most deplorable features of our administration of justice at present is that people who are subsequently acquitted or not sent to gaol spend months in prison before coming to trial.

The Solicitor-General: There has been a recent report on the subject which we discussed to some extent in the recent debate on the Legal Advice and Assistance Bill. I then indicated that I was


responding sympathetically to some of the matters there set out. Obviously, the proposal that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned is one of the solutions which must be considered by any Government wrestling with the same intractable problems of the crime explosion as faced the right hon. and learned Gentleman when he was in office.

ELGAR BIRTHPLACE TRUST

Sir G. Nabarro: asked the Attorney-General whether police investigations into the affairs of the Elgar Birthplace Trust are completed following the report of the Charity Commissioners; and what action he is taking.

The Solicitor-General: The police inquiries into this complex matter are continuing. No decision can be taken about further action until those inquiries are completed.

Sir G. Nabarro: Does not my hon. and learned Friend realise that the matter has been in the hands of the police for more than 12 months, that it is not as complex as he suggests and that all the trustees, including myself, are struggling with the operation of trying to reconstruct the trust? Cannot he do anything to expedite completion of the inquiries?

The Solicitor-General: I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern in the matter. He will recall that it was only last July that the inquiry conducted by Mr. Settle on behalf of the Charity Commissioners was completed. Certain difficulties have subsequently arisen due to the absence from this country, now concluded, of one of the people concerned in the investigation. My hon. Friend can be assured that the matter is being pressed forward as expeditiously as possible.

MATRIMONIAL LAW

Mr. Clinton Davis: asked the Attorney-General what plans he has to introduce further legislation to reform matrimonial law; and if he will make a statement.

The Solicitor-General: Several aspects of matrimonial law are at present under consideration by the Law Commission. The Government remain disposed to give

sympathetic consideration to any proposals which the commission may put forward.

Mr. Davis: Is the Solicitor-General considering the introduction of legislation in particular to deal with resolving the disparities in legal concepts of matrimonial law between courts of summary jurisdiction and higher courts? Is not it absurd that there should be that difference? When does the hon. and learned Gentleman think that action will be taken?

The Solicitor-General: This is one of the matters which is being examined by the Law Commission. The discrepancies between the law applicable in the higher courts and in the magistrates' courts is well known. The Law Commission hopes shortly to circulate a working paper asking for comments on proposals that it will put forward for eliminating those discrepancies.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: I appreciate that the Law Commission is seized of a number of problems relating to this matter. Do the Government give general support to the concept of a comprehensive family court, which many people are anxious to see established?

The Solicitor-General: That proposal has been put forward from a number of different places at different times in recent years. It is also now the subject of a study by a working party.

INTERROGATION METHODS

Mr. George Cunningham: asked the Attorney-General whether, in the light of the Parker Report, he will now initiate legal proceedings against the Ministers responsible for authorising the criminal assaults committed in the course of carrying out the interrogation methods described in the report.

The Solicitor-General: No, Sir. My right hon. and learned Friend has been shown no evidence to support the allegation that anyone within the jurisdiction of the English courts committed an offence in respect of the interrogation methods described in the Parker Report.

Mr. Cunningham: When a former Lord Chancellor asserts quite distinctly


that the actions that were taken are contrary to the law in this country and in Northern Ireland, and the majority in the Parker Committee drew back from any remark about the Northern Ireland situation only in deference to the Northern Ireland courts, is it not necessary to have the matter cleared up quickly to assure the public that Ministers may not hold nominal authority for actions done contrary to law and remain in office?

The Solicitor-General: The Parker Report made clear that it would not be proper for the committee to comment on any aspect currently under consideration by the courts of Northern Ireland. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said the same on 2nd March. As to the position in this country, I have nothing to add to the answer I have already given.

Mr. Evelyn King: Is not it a fact that over 200 murders have been committed in the past two or three years by the I.R.A. and not a single conviction has yet been secured? Is not that a much more urgent matter for inquiry?

The Solicitor-General: I cannot comment on the figure my hon. Friend has quoted but I understand his concern. The matter still remains one for the Northern Ireland authorities.

ECCLESIASTICAL FEES

Mr. Spriggs: asked the hon. Member for Chelsea, as Second Church Estates Commissioner, what criteria were used by the Church Commissioners for England when, in exercise of their powers conferred on them by Section 2(1) of the Ecclesiastical Fees Measure, 1962(a), and all other powers enabling them in that behalf, they ordered increased fees by the Parochial Fees Order, 1972, due to come into operation on 1st June, 1972.

The Second Church Estates Commissioner Representing the Church Commissioners (Mr. Marcus Worsley): The main criterion was the fall in the value of money. This was not fully taken into account when the fees were last reviewed in 1962.

Mr. Spriggs: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that over the years the increases in fees have amounted to many hundred per cent.? One in particular, for the carriage of a headstone or surround

across church grounds, has increased from £5·50 to £11. Is not that disgraceful at a time when the Government are asking everyone to keep down costs and are asking trade unionists to restrict their wage demands? Yet the Government allow this matter to lie on the table. Why?

Mr. Worsley: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, the figure he gave is an in-increase of 100 per cent., not many hundred. An examination of the figures will show him that on average over the years the increases have been rather less than those necessary to keep up with the fall in the value of money. The fee for the cheapest headstones has been reduced under the orders.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Does not my hon. Friend appreciate that an increase of 100 per cent. is scant consolation? Will he not ask the Church Commissioners to reconsider and, if possible, remove this grossly inflationary increase in the cost of dying?

Mr. Worsley: I note what my right hon. and learned Friend has said but I think in all seriousness that, on looking at the figures in the context of the long period since a major review has taken place, he will find them not unreasonable.

Mr. Harold Walker: The hon. Gentleman has not told the House how an increased cost can be involved in granting permission for the erection of a headstone. How can such an increased cost be incurred? Will any of the increase go towards the stipends of low-paid clergymen? Will he ensure that they get a share and that the extra money will not all go to diocesan funds?

Mr. Worsley: I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance in the case of most of the money involved, although some goes to the parochial church councils, who are responsible for maintaining churchyards. I think he will agree that it is a reasonable charge.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND MEASURES

Mr. Heffer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. While I have a great deal of sympathy with Question No. 36, is it not possible for the House to devise some other way of raising such matters rather


than have items concerning the Church of England coming before the House? I know that it is the established Church but is it not time that a Select Committee had a look at the procedure of raising questions of this kind and other matters relating to the Church of England? We are not all members of the Church of England—right hon. and hon. Members may be Methodists or Roman Catholics, for example, and we may have Moslems in the House sooner or later. In these circumstances, is it not time we had a look at the whole issue? Could we not have a Select Committee to go into the matter? I say this as a member of the Church of England. It is about time we got away from the archaic practice of having such items discussed in this House.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has raised this as a point of order. I make no comment on the substance of the matter. It is not for me but for other people to consider.

CHINA (EXCHANGE OF AMBASSADORS)

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Alec Douglas-Home): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement.
Discussions with the Government of the People's Republic of China about an exchange of ambassadors have been successfully concluded and a communiquéon this matter was signed today in Peking.
When early last year we decided to resume discussions with the Chinese Government on this subject we told them that if an agreement on an exchange of ambassadors was reached we would be prepared to withdraw our consulate from Taiwan. This we shall now do.
With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT the text of the communiquéwhich we have agreed with the Chinese Government.

Mr. Healey: First, I express to the right hon. Gentleman how glad we are on this side of the House that the chargés d'affaires will now be raised to the status of ambassadors, and we express the hope that this step will inaugurate

an increasingly friendly period of co-operation with China, both politically and economically.
Do the Government maintain the position, taken by the British Government at the Cairo conference, that Taiwan is a part of China? Has he any plans for visiting China himself in the near future? Will he consider urgently the possibility of sending an official trade mission to China?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his general welcome for this move. The right hon. Gentleman asks whether Taiwan is part of China. I would express the position as follows: the Government of the United Kingdom acknowledge the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the People's Republic of China. Both the Government of the People's Republic of China and Taipeh maintain that Taiwan is a part of China. We held the view both at Cairo and at Potsdam that Taiwan should be restored to China. That view has not changed. We think that the Taiwan question is China's internal affair to be settled by the Chinese people themselves.
I should be glad to go to China but I could not go in the immediate future because, I am afraid, my programme is too heavy.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Does my right hon. Friend expect that these arrangements will expedite procedures in the case of arrests of British subjects in the Republic of China in future, if such should arise? Secondly, what in practice will be the arrangements for looking after British interests in Taiwan in future?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The Australians have kindly agreed to look after British interests in Taiwan. As for expediting procedures in relation to people who are still in Chinese custody, I think that this new agreement will create a better climate in which we can talk to the Chinese.

Mr. Pardoe: I welcome this announcement. Bearing in mind the British Government's recognition of Taiwan as a province of the People's Republic of China, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has had or intends to


have any discussion about the long-term future of Hong Kong?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: That question does not arise.

Mr. Gorst: Is my right hon. Friend's statement likely to improve the chances of my constituent's sister, Mrs. Gladys Yang, who has been in detention for four years in China, being released or at least allowed to communicate with her family? Might it expedite her release from this so-called "investigation" which the Chinese authorities say her case is being subject to at the moment?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: As I think my hon. Friend knows, we have done all we canto achieve Mrs. Yang's release. My reply to him is the same as my reply to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), that we must not raise hopes in these matters, but we hope that the new climate will lead to the possibility of further talks on this subject.

Mr. Dalyell: I am delighted. First, may I pay tribute to a number of Foreign Office officials here in London and in Peking whose skilful spadework have made this agreement possible, in particular Mr. John Denson, a former chargé d'affaire, whose mastery of the Chinese language gave him great esteem in Peking but who had to retire, unfortunately, a little early from that post, owing to temporary ill-heath.
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether we can now get on to the subject of the possibility of B.O.A.C. having a direct air route to Peking? If we are to have the technical and trading relationships which many of us would like to see, it requires an easy exchange of people, particularly in, for example, the nuclear power and motor industries or in many other trade sectors which might now seem to be possible.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his tribute to officials, who have been very good in this matter. I did not tell the House in my statement, but Mr. John Addis, who is well qualified for the post, will be our first Ambassador in Peking. Of course we want the best possible communications with the People's Republic, but the hon. Gentleman's question about B.O.A.C. and trade

had better be put to the Minister concerned.

Sir Gilbert Longden: While welcoming my right hon. Friend's statement, may I ask whether he has any information as to the wishes of the people of Taiwan proper other than the Chinese Nationalists there?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I do not have any indication of the wishes of the people of Taiwan. I can only repeat what I have said—indeed, I cannot add to what I said to the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey)—that we think that the Taiwan question is China's internal affair to be settled by the Chinese people. This is in accordance with the views which the British Government took both at Cairo and at Potsdam.

Mr. Pavitt: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that, in addition to the trade links which we used to have with China, there were wide links between the British co-operative movement and the industrial co-operatives in China, which were fostered by Sir Stafford Cripps during war-time and which lasted for some years until Chiang Kai-shek lost power? Will the right hon. Gentleman look again at this area of contact between the British people and the Chinese people through trade unions, co-operatives and other people's organisations in helping to achieve future friendship and understanding?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: We look to all opportunities of contact between the British and Chinese peoples.

Mr. Tilney: Although our trade with Taiwan is small, may I ask my right hon. Friend for an assurance that the withdrawal of our consulate-general from Taiwan will not prevent our trade continuing with Taiwan?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I hope that will be so. Our consul was never accredited to the Government of Taiwan. He was accredited to the local provincial authorities. I hope that the trade will increase. West Germany, for example, rapidly increased her trade in Taiwan without consular representation.

Mr. Walters: Would my right hon. Friend bear in mind the need to give the maximum support to British industry as


soon as possible in its endeavours to enter the Chinese market before the United States, whose foreign policy has been so infinitely more dilatory than ours, moves in?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: We shall certainly give any support we can to our industry in relation to trade with China. Lately there have been signs that industry is interested, and so are the Chinese Government.

Following is the communiqueé:

COMMUNIQUE ON THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND ON AN EXCHANGE OF AMBASSADORS.

Both confirming the principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-interference in each other's internal affairs and equality and mutual benefit, the Government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of the United Kingdom have decided to raise the level of their respective Diplomatic Representatives in each other's capitals from Chargeé d'Affaires to Ambassadors as from 13th March, 1972.

The Government of the United Kingdom, acknowledging the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the People's Republic of China, have decided to remove their official representation in Taiwan on 13th March, 1972

The Government of the United Kingdom recognise the Government of the People's Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China.

The Government of the People's Republic of China appreciates the above stand of the Government of the United Kingdom.

NORTHERN IRELAND

Mr. McManus: On a point of order. I have already given you notice, Mr. Speaker, of my intention to ask leave to move the adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the peace proposals of the I.R.A.
This is a specific matter because the demands are clear and unmistakable. They are: the immediate withdrawal off the streets of British troops; a declaration by the British Government that troops will eventually be withdrawn; a declaration of intent that the Irish people have the right to determine their own future without

outside interference; the unconditional end of internment; absolute political amnesty; and the abolition of Stormont.
This is an important matter not only because these demands indicate that the I.R.A. desires peace and justice and not only because the I.R.A. has demonstrated that it has absolute control of its own forces—the North has had the quietest weekend for years—but mainly because these are the demands not just of the I.R.A. With a few variations here and there, these are the basic demands of the entire anti-Unionist population of the North of Ireland. From that population now comes one united clear and unambiguous voice saying that these are the basic demands of that population. The Government have no excuse for saying that they are confused or uncertain about the demands. The position is crystal clear.
The matter is urgent. It could not be more urgent, for two reasons. At midnight tonight the three-day truce ends, and unless there is a positive response from the Government we may assume that violence will recommence. If that happens, all the world will see more clearly than ever before that responsibility for the violence rests where it has always rested—on the shoulders of this Government.
Finally, it is a most urgent matter, because if the initiative that the Government propose to take, already seven months too late, does not meet those basic demands and contains only a few paltry concessions, the unanimous, united and unambiguous answer from the minority will be, "No".

Rev. Ian Paisley: On a point of order—

Mr. Speaker: No point of order can arise at this moment.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. McManus) for giving me notice of his intention to make his application to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter which should have urgent consideration, namely,
the peace proposals of the I.R.A.".
My ruling bears no relation to and is no comment on the merits or otherwise


of the application. I have to rule simply whether I should give the application precedence over other business. I am not prepared to give it such precedence.

Rev. Ian Paisley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Ought not the House to

be aware that, far from the weekend in Belfast being quiet, there were burnings and robberies and a Roman Catholic woman was shot dead by terrorists?

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a matter of order for me under the Standing Orders of the House.

HOUSING FINANCE BILL (ALLOCATION OF TIME)

Report and Third Reading


2.— (1) The Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading of the Bill shall be completed in three allotted days and shall be brought to a conclusion at Eleven o'clock on the last of those days; and for the purposes of Standing Order No. 43 (Business Committee) this Order shall be taken to allot to the Proceedings on Consideration such part of those days as the Resolution of the Business Committee may determine.


(2) The Business Committee shall report to the House their resolutions as to the Proceedings on Consideration of the Bill, and as to the allocation of time between those Proceedings and Proceedings on Third Reading, not later than the fourth day on which the House sits after the day on which the Chairman of the Standing Committee reports the Bill to the House.


(3) The resolutions in any report made under Standing Order No. 43 (Business Committee) may be varied by a further report so made, whether or not within the time specified in sub-paragraph (2) of this paragraph, and whether or not the resolutions have been agreed to by the House.

Procedure in Standing Committee


3.— (1) At a Sitting of the Standing Committee at which any Proceedings on the Bill are to be brought to a conclusion under a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee the Chairman shall not adjourn the Committee under any Order relating to the sittings of the Committee until the Proceedings have been brought to a conclusion.


(2) No Motion shall be made in the Standing Committee relating to the sitting of the Committee except by a Member of the Government, and the Chairman shall permit a brief explanatory statement from the Member who makes, and from a Member who opposes the Motion, and shall then put the Question thereon.


4. No Motion shall be made to postpone any Clause, Schedule, new Clause or new Schedule, but the resolutions of the Business Sub-Committee may include alterations in the order in which Clauses, Schedules, new Clauses and new Schedules are to be taken in the Standing Committee.

Conclusion of Proceedings in Committee


5. On the conclusion of the Proceedings in any Committee on the Bill the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any Question.

Dilatory motions


6. No dilatory Motion with respect to, or in the course of, Proceedings on the Bill shall be made in the Standing Committee or on an allotted day except by a Member of the Government, and the Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.

Extra time on allotted days


7.—(1) On an allotted day paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted business) shall apply to the Proceedings on the Bill for one hour after Ten o'clock.


(2) Any period during which Proceedings on the Bill may be proceeded with after Ten o'clock under paragraph (7) of Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration) shall be in addition to the period under this paragraph.

Standing Order No. 13


8. Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of select committees at commencement of public business) shall not apply on an allotted day.

Private business


9. Any private business which has been set down for consideration at Seven o'clock on an allotted day shall, instead of being considered as provided by the Standing Orders, be considered at the conclusion of the Proceedings on the Bill on that day, and paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted Business) shall apply to the private business for a period of three hours from the conclusion of the Proceedings on the Bill or, if those Proceedings are concluded before Ten o'clock, for a period equal to the time elapsing between Seven o'clock and the completion of those Proceedings.

Conclusion of Proceedings


10.—(1) For the purpose of bringing to a conclusion any Proceedings which are to be brought to a conclusion at a time appointed by this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee or the Business Sub-Committee and which have not previously been brought to a conclusion, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall forthwith proceed to put the following Questions (but no others), that is to say—


(a) the Question or Questions already proposed from the Chair, or necessary to bring to a decision a Question so proposed (including, in the case of a new Clause or new Schedule which has been read a second time, the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill);


(b) the Question on any amendment or Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of any Member, if that amendment or Motion is moved by a Member of the Government;


(c) any other Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded;


and on a Motion so moved for a new Clause or a new Schedule, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall put only the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.


(2) Proceedings under sub-paragraph (1) of this paragraph shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.


(3) If, at Seven o'clock on an allotted day, any Proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion at or before that time have not been concluded, any Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration) which, apart from this Order, would stand over to that time shall stand over until those Proceedings have been concluded.


(4) If, on an allotted day, a Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 stands over to Seven o'clock on an allotted day, or to any later time under sub-paragraph (3) above, the bringing to a conclusion of any Proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion on that day at any hour falling after the beginning of the Proceedings on that Motion shall be postponed for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on that Motion.

Supplemental orders


11.—(1) The Proceedings on any Motion moved in the House by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order (including anything which might have been the subject of a report of the Business Committee or Business Sub-Committee) shall, if not previously concluded, be brought to a conclusion one hour after they have been commenced, and the last foregoing paragraph shall apply as if the Proceedings were Proceedings on the Bill on an allotted day.


(2) If any Motion moved by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order is under consideration at Seven o'clock on a day on which any private business has been set down for consideration at Seven o'clock, the private business shall stand over and be considered when the Proceedings on the Motion have been concluded, and paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted Business) shall apply to the private business so standing over for a period equal to the time for which it so stands over.


(3) If on an allotted day on which any Proceedings on the Bill are to be brought to a conclusion at a time appointed by this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee the House is adjourned, or the sitting is suspended, before that time, no notice shall be required of a Motion moved at the next sitting by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order.

Saving


12. Nothing in this Order or in a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or the Business Committee shall—


(a) prevent any Proceedings to which the Order or Resolution applies from being taken or completed earlier than is required by the Order or Resolution, or


(b) prevent any business (whether on the Bill or not) from being proceeded with on any day after the completion of all such Proceedings on the Bill as are to be taken on that day.

Re-committal


13.—(1) References in this Order to Proceedings on Consideration or Proceedings on Third Reading include references to Proceedings, at those stages respectively, for, on or in consequence of re-committal.


(2) On an allotted day no debate shall be permitted on any Motion to re-commit the Bill (whether as a whole or otherwise), and Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith any Question necessary to dispose of the Motion, including the Question on any amendment moved to the Question.

Interpretation


14. In this Order—


"allotted day" means any day (other than a Friday) on which the Bill is put down as the first Government Order of the Day;


"the Bill" means the Housing Finance Bill;


"Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee" means a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee as agreed to by the Standing Committee;


"Resolution of the Business Committee" means a Resolution of the Business Committee as agreed to by the House.

Mr. Speaker: I have not selected the Amendment in line 4, leave out from 'on' to end of line and insert:
the day when all remaining Clauses, Schedules and new Clauses, and Amendments thereto, have been adequately considered by the Committee
in the name of the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland), but I have selected that in line 7, leave out "three" and insert "six".

Mr. Whitelaw: Over the years, all Governments have used timetable Motions and all Oppositions have, naturally, objected to them. There are, therefore, abundant quotations which each Leader of the House can use against his predecessors in the opposite party. The new procedure for shorter debates on timetable Motions, unanimously proposed by the Select Committee on Procedure and recently adopted by the House, gives us an opportunity in this debate to put an end to this rather fruitless exchange. The question before us is not whether timetable Motions in general are justified, because it is accepted on both sides of the House that in certain circumstances they are, but rather whether this particular timetable Motion is justified in the case of this particular Bill.
My experience, both in Government and in opposition, has taught me that every effort should be made whenever possible to reach voluntary agreements on the time necessary for the full, constructive discussion of any major Bill. In the majority of cases, such arrangements are made, and I welcome them. But there remain a few highly controversial Bills about which the Opposition of the day decide that, for policy reasons, they cannot accept any proposals, however reasonable. I do not complain of this. Indeed, I was obviously a party to such decisions in the last Parliament. But I say that when such a position on the part of the Opposition becomes clear, the Government have no alternative but to introduce a timetable Motion.

The facts of the discussion of this Bill speak for themselves. The Bill has received some 200 hours' discussion in no fewer than 45 sittings of the Standing Committee. In total some 119 hours have been spent on Parts V and VI alone. No Bill since the war to which a timetable Motion has been applied in Committee has received so much time before the Government felt it necessary to move a timetable Motion. This alone demonstrates the Government's forbearance.

By contrast, under the last Labour Government the Transport Bill of the Session 1967–68, in many ways a comparable precedent, was guillotined after 20 sittings of the Standing Committee, only 70 hours. The Ports Bill in the session 1969–70 was guillotined after 24 sittings, a total of 82 hours.

Furthermore, in respect of the Housing Finance Bill the Government made an offer of a voluntary timetable for the remainder of the Committee stage which in my experience was highly generous. We offered the Opposition a closing date for the Committee stage which was several weeks ahead. During this time, we offered them any arrangement of the debates which they would have chosen. They could have chosen how many days a week they wished to debate the Bill and at what times, so that by any standards there would be ample opportunity to discuss the 30 remaining Clauses, many of which are of comparatively minor importance, and the remaining Schedules to the Bill.

This offer was turned down and in turning it down the Opposition clearly showed that they were not interested in any realistic voluntary arrangement. They have shown this, too, in many of the debates, particularly over the last few weeks of the Committee stage. The figures of almost 12 hours spent in discussions of sittings and dilatory Motions and more than nine hours on points of order also speak for themselves.

I have no doubt, therefore, that this timetable Motion is inevitable. I believe that the timetable proposed provides a fully adequate opportunity for discussion of the remainder of the Bill. It is open to the Business Sub-Committee to allot as many sittings as it chooses for further consideration of the Committee stage between now and 29th March. Thereafter, the allocation of three days for Report and Third Reading compares favourably with the practice for previous Bills of similar length and importance.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Whitelaw: No. I am sorry, but it is a short debate and I do not intend to give way.
It compares well, for example, with the three days allotted for the Bill of the right hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle), the Transport Bill, in the last Parliament, which had 169 Clauses against the 103 Clauses of the present Bill.
The Government, therefore, having been driven to this Motion by the actions of right hon. and hon Members opposite, are maintaining their position by providing, within the timetable, ample opportunity for reasonable debate on the remaining stages of the Bill. I therefore commend this entirely justified and eminently reasonable Motion to the House.

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland), I think that I should indicate how the debate could be conducted. As I have said, I have selected an Amendment. It would be convenient if the Amendment were to be moved during the course of the closing speech for the Opposition. Meanwhile, any argument about the Amendment or the substantive Motion will be in order. Similarly, when the Minister replies, he will not be limited to the Amendment only.

3.51 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Crosland: The Leader of the House has treated the Motion in the same kind of cavalier and contemptuous fashion that the Minister in charge of the Bill has treated the Committee throughout our discussions.

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for one thing, and one thing only: that he did not use an argument very popular with Leaders of the House when they introduce guillotine Motions; that they were justified in doing so by the fact that the Bill concerned played a prominent part in their election manifestos. There were three things in the Tory Party manifesto that bear on the Motion: first, to introduce a fair rents Bill; second, to cut prices at a stroke; and third, to increase the freedom of local authorities. The Bill fulfils one and breaks two of those election pledges. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman was wise not to use that argument to justify the Motion.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman at once on a number of points he made. I agree that Governments, of course, have the right to introduce timetable Motions. I agree that all Governments exercise that right, although history shows that Conservative Governments exercise it rather more freely and frequently than Labour Governments. I also agree that when a Government exercise that right, there frequently ensues a debate in the House which is ritual in character and which often displays synthetic indignation, and consists of tit-for-tat quotations about what people said when they were sitting on the other side of the House, not to mention elaborate calculations of column inches of HANSARD taken up by speakers, and so on. I have taken even less trouble than has the right hon. Gentleman to look up all those often tiresome precedents and, therefore, I have no damaging quotations and no elaborate mathematical calculations. I deal with one question only, which is, given that the Government must select which Bills they guillotine, are they right to decide to guillotine this particular Bill at this particular moment? I would answer that they are not.
I start by saying that the nature and the intrinsic importance of the Bill are such as to demand, and to demand imperatively, a full, free and unfettered discussion of the Bill in Committee. After all, let us consider what the Bill does. I am not arguing about its merits but speaking factually about what the Bill does. First, it enforces an unprecedently large increase in rents on 5½ million council tenants, a doubling by 1976—nothing that the Minister has said has dented or


destroyed our calculations to that effect—and an increase of about 15 per cent. to 25 per cent. per year in the period immediately ahead, an increase wholly out of line with the 5 per cent. price increase target agreed by the Government and the T.U.C., and an increase which is an absolute guarantee that the price stability we all want and which the Government have long since promised us will not occur and that price inflation will continue unabated.
Second, because of this exorbitantly high level of rents, an unprecedently large number of tenants, indeed, some millions of families, will have to submit to a household means test to obtain rent rebates. In other words, they will be unable to stand on their own two feet and will have to apply for what they, at least, rightly or wrongly, consider to be charity. So we have here, for the first time in our social history, means testing on a positively massive scale. It is extraordinary that the Prime Minister, who clearly does not understand the purposes of the Bill, makes constant speeches taking pride in the huge numbers of people who will be subjected to this means test. We, on the contrary, think it quite wrong to set rents at a level so high that so many millions of people will have to apply for rebates.

Mr. J. T. Price: And, at the same time, in one nation.

Mr. Crosland: I acknowledge my hon. Friend's unvarying perspicacity.
Third, the Bill introduces an entirely new principle, that over much of the country the cost of rebates and the cost of the private rent allowance will fall not on the Government or on public funds but on council tenants. In other words, the Bill abandons a principle accepted by all parties, at any rate since the First World War—and, so far as I know, in every other civilised country in the world—that the relief of poverty and the maintenance of incomes is a national responsibility. Instead, a large part of the burden is now to be placed on my council tenants in Grimsby and those of many hon. Members on both sides of the House. It is they and not the State who will now bear a large part of the cost of paying rebates and allowances for their poorer neighbours. That alone

would make the Bill a revolutionary Measure, and this new principle is bitterly objected to by the whole of the local authority world.
As if that is not enough, the Bill introduces another new principle, that council housing over much of the country should become a profit-making activity and that the profit should be taxed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the rate of 50 per cent. So we have two concepts that are entirely new in the history of public sector housing: a concept of landlord profit and a concept of a new tax which will fall on council tenants but on no one living in the private sector, whether rented or owner occupied.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Mr. Frank Allaun (Salford, East) rose—

Mr. Crosland: I am concerned about the time. Probably all the members of the Standing Committee will try to speak in the debate, and I am anxious to do nothing to prevent any of my hon. Friends from so doing.
Lastly, the Bill introduces a major constitutional change in the relationship between central government and local government. Despite all the promises in the Tory Party's election manifesto of June, 1970, local government is now to be deprived, under the Bill of all freedom, all power and all independence in the matter of rent policy. And if it jibes, revolts or seeks to protect its tenants, it is then faced with autocratic penalties for which I can find no precedent in any of our domestic legislation. A housing commissioner would be sent from Whitehall with the power to take over an authority's entire housing function.
Poplar in 1922 was thought to have raised issues of the greatest constitutional significance. It will be interesting to see what future constitutional historians have to say about Clauses 93 to 95, Clauses which are now to be so blithely guillotined.
There is no denying that the Bill is a revolutionary Measure. That is not just my opinion or an opinion put forward by the Opposition as part of the normal exchange of party controversy. It is also clearly the opinion of Ministers. I should have thought that the Secretary


of State for the Environment might have shown us the courtesy of appearing for the debate—I am sorry, he is in the Chamber. I am glad to see him.—[AN HON. MEMBER: "Twenty minutes late."]—Twenty minutes late, and typically bashful and self-effacing. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State called the Bill the most radical reform of housing this century. The Minister for Housing and Construction said the Bill will be more important to the daily lives of our people than even the great issue of the Common Market. The Secretary of State for the Environment, in an outrageous television political broadcast a few days ago, made no demur when his obsequious interviewer, another Tory Member of Parliament, said:
Your Housing Bill has caused more controversy in Parliament than any other Measure for years.
I agree with all those statements, and they are echoed throughout the local authority world. Therefore, I hope there is no doubt about the outstanding importance of the Bill and its imperative claim to be fully and constructively discussed.
However, I concede that if no progress is being made on a Bill, if the Opposition are patently obstructing and filibustering, the Government have the right to use the guillotine, however intrinsically important the Bill. So the next question is: Have the Opposition been filibustering on this Bill, or have we made reasonable progress? We all know—and I said this in Committee upstairs—that there are Bills in respect of which the Chairman and the Government are faced with relentless irrelevance and virtually no progress is made week after week. The question is whether that is true of our discussions upstairs.
I said at the first sitting of the Committee:
As the Minister knows, we regard the central proposals in the Bill with implacable hostility. Nevertheless, we do not propose to filibuster in any way, because there is far too much in the Bill that we want to get down to opposing, changing and amending. We have no intention of wasting time, because there is much too much in the Bill that we want to discuss."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 25th Nov., 1971; c. 5.]
My hon. Friends and I have fully carried out that pledge—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—as anyone who reads the HANSARD reports of our debates must see.

The Leader of the House, in a speech which lasted barely five minutes, was able to produce virtually no evidence that we had used the tactics by which Oppositions, if they so choose, can obstruct progress on a Bill. Let me give one or two examples.
The Leader of the House mentioned the question of points of order in the Committee. A number of them were on Motions to adjourn because we were sitting at intolerable hours in the early morning. But, in fact, the Committee has spent less time on points of order in three months than, if I may say without disrespect to you, Mr. Speaker, is normally spent in the Chamber in a fortnight. There have been far fewer points of order in the Committee than is normally the case in the Chamber.
We have made no attempt, unlike the Secretary of State for the Environment during discussions on the Transport Bill, 1968, to obstruct by the common method of proliferating Amendments on the Notice Paper. On the Transport Bill 2,000 Opposition Amendments were tabled. On this Bill the Opposition have tabled barely 500. In addition, we have accepted, with very little debate, almost every sitting Motion which the Government have proposed, except for the monstrous Motion—I do not know how seriously it was intended—that we should sit for five days and have ten sittings in a week, which would have destroyed any possibility of our preparing work on the Bill or carrying out any other public or parliamentary duties.
True, I am happy to say that we have had occasional moments of humour in the Committee in which Members on the Government side have fully participated and which have occurred almost entirely during the middle of the night when the only alternative would have been for us to come to blows. It is true that we have had occasional, not frequent, long speeches, but, in practice, they have not wasted time because the Chairman—and I make no criticism of this, although we have suffered from it—has taken that fact into account in the time he normally allows for debate.
May I say in passing that the Bill needed an exceptionally long cross-examination because the country was given so little information about it before it was published. Before the Transport


Bill was published there were no fewer than five explanatory White Papers. An exceptionally flimsy White Paper was published before this Bill, and it has been a constant refrain among local authorities that before we started discussing the Bill they had nothing like the detailed financial and mathematical information which they needed in order to comment on it.
It is an irony that the one publication which has made niggling comment on the Committee's proceedings, presumably briefed by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison)—and this represents probably his major, almost his sole, contribution to our proceedings in the last three months—namely, New Society, after—

Mr. Timothy Raison: May I assure the right hon. Gentleman that, although I have read the article to which he refers, I have had no discussion with any member of the New Society staff about housing policy or the Bill?

Mr. Crosland: I had hoped that, since the hon. Gentleman has been almost totally silent in Committee, he had at least found someone to talk to. It is ironic that, after making one or two niggling comments, the rest of the editorial consists entirely of certain figures and arithmetic which we dragged out of the Minister with the greatest difficulty on about our thirtieth sitting.
If further proof is needed of what I am saying about the absence of obstruction of the Bill, I point out that in three months, after 45 sittings and nearly 200 hours of debate, the Chairman has accepted the Closure on only 14 occasions, and on only four Clauses out of 70 has he refused debate on the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill". The result is—and this was not brought out clearly by the Leader of the House for those who are not members of the Committee—that the Government have obtained 70 Clauses and six Schedules of this profoundly controversial Bill. Even The Times was moved to say in an editorial on this subject on Friday last week, when referring to the proposal to introduce the guillotine:
The committee has spent 189 hours getting there

—that is, to the point at which the guillotine was announced—
which is not too long for a Bill of such complexity, originality and political punch. The Opposition has given it a tough going over, and rightly so.
Therefore, apart from the intrinsic importance of the Bill, the Government lack the normal, proper and constitutional excuse for introducing the guillotine, namely, that progress on the Bill is virtually at a standstill; it is not. It is clear that at our present rate of progress we could have finished our study of the Bill in a reasonable time without the imposition of the guillotine.
I can find no precedent, certainly in post-war history, for a guillotine being introduced in Committee when no fewer than 70 Clauses have been completed. It is without precedent to introduce the guillotine when so much progress has been made. However, the Government, having failed to strangle the Committee stage by their proposal that the Committee should sit continously for five days a week, thereby making serious work on it impossible, have now resorted to the cruder weapon of the guillotine. Despite the good progress which has been made, to which tribute has more than once been paid by the Minister in charge of the Bill, we are to have a sudden and sharp speeding-up of our debates—from 70 Clauses and six Schedules in 45 sittings to 33 Clauses and five Schedules in about 12 sittings. In other words, instead of a length of time which The Times described as
not too long for a Bill of such complexity.
we are to proceed at a pace which clearly gives inadequate time for proper consideration. This enforced speeding up of our discussions is proposed at a time when we still have before us highly complicated Clauses on housing associations on which, despite one concession by the Minister, great anxiety has been expressed in the voluntary housing movement and by many hon. Members opposite.
We still have ahead of us Clauses 93 to 95, with their unprecedentedly autocratic powers which, according to this week's issue of the Municipal Journal,
…more than almost anything else one can think of, would sour the relationship between central and local government for many years to come.


We still have before us Clause 96 and Schedules 7 and 8, which terminate all the existing subsidies.
I suppose that from the Opposition's point of view, there will be a more than proportionate reduction in the time available to us because no doubt we shall have a torrent of oratory from hon. Members opposite who—and this applies even to those who purport to be concerned with housing and social matters generally—have remained disgracefully and cynically silent during discussion of the most important domestic Bill we have had for many years.
Further, the guillotine comes at a time when not only tenants but responsible local authority opinion of all parties, as last week's angry meeting of the A.M.C. clearly showed, are becoming more and not less concerned with the implications of the Bill. I have here a letter from the A.M.C. addressed to my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. David Stoddart), of which I will read one sentence:
It is therefore the earnest hope of the Association that, even at this stage in the Bill's progress…
—the letter was written only a few days ago—
…account will be taken of the views of local authorities upon whose co-operation the success of Government's legislation must depend.
This week's Municipal Journal, after reporting last Tuesday's A.M.C. meeting, says:
The Government ought to be extremely concerned about these expressions of dissatisfaction with the way the Bill is being taken through Parliament.
I am not making this afternoon simply a conventional party and Opposition case. I am quoting also the views at this late stage of an A.M.C. which still—this will not be true after 4th May—to the extent of two-thirds is Conservative controlled. These considerations should have played a much larger part in the Government's thinking.
It is for these reasons that we strongly oppose the timetable Motion and have rejected what the Leader of the House called the generous offer of a voluntary timetable, which was only marginally different from the timetable laid clown in the Motion we are now discussing, and would have made on my calculation

a difference of three days at most. It is for these reasons that we have tabled our Amendment to give at least as many days on Report stage of the Bill as on the Local Government Bill, and as many further days in Committee as are needed for an adequate consideration of the remainder of the Bill.
We could have included in our Amendment, as the Secretary of State did on the Transport Bill in 1968 when that was being guillotined, an astronomical figure of additional hours. He asked for 455 additional hours. Rather than be so frivolous we have simply asked for the time needed, at something like the present rate of progress, for proper scrutiny of the remaining Clauses.
Is it impossible under our present parliamentary procedures, given ingenuity and good will, to find the necessary time? I accept that there are always acute timetable difficulties on the Floor of the House, and we all understand that, but we are discussing time in Committee upstairs. Given that we have finished nearly 70 Clauses of the Bill, I cannot see why, with good will, we should not find it possible to have the time needed for proper consideration of the rest of the Bill.
The answer is that time could easily be found, but of course it will not be found, and it will not be found for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the proceedings of the Standing Committee. It will not be found partly because the Government's entire legislative programme has got into a total mess, and partly because the Government, regardless of whether or not we have a proper discussion on the Bill, have one single overriding aim, which is to get the Bill into law in time to validate the £1 increase in rents in October. That is the basic reason why the Leader of the House, although he could, given good will, find the time, will not agree to do so.
We all know that there are threats of extra-parliamentary action on the Bill. There is talk of defiance and non-implementation. No hon. Member should countenance unconstitutional action, although the Government appear to have anticipated it by inserting Clauses 93 to 95. But if one practises the politics of confrontation as the Government have done, one finds that two can play at confrontation. Having discovered this brutal


fact of life, the Government have wisely withdrawn from confrontation and reversed their policy on U.C.S., on miners' pay and on relations with the T.U.C. I end by urging the Government as strongly as I can, before it is finally too late, to show the same last-minute wisdom here and to withdraw the Bill altogether. If they stubbornly insist on going ahead, I urge them at least not to show a blatant disregard for tenants' rights and feelings by imposing this wholly unjustified guillotine.

4.15 p.m.

Mr. Spencer Le Marchant (The High Peak): The Bill is probably one of the best pieces of legislation on housing that there has been for a long time, according to Father Byrne, of Shelter. It is a major step forward. We on this side of the House accuse the Opposition members of the Committee of shift—not of shift such as we have seen on Europe, but of a shift of practice, evasion, rotation, the substitution of one thing for another.
The right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) has quoted some things which he has said, but he also said at the first sitting of the Committee that he would give no reasonable excuse for a guillotine. After making that remark, how could he, after Amendment No. 261 had been debated for seven hours and the Closure had been moved refer to:
That disgraceful pseudo-guillotine Motion."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E 8th February, 1972; c. 1497.]
The hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) having spent the night away, came into the Committee on the morning of Wednesday, 8th March, and spoke to us for 1¼ hours. Since then he has continually been telling us of his ability to speak at length, and has shown that he can do so.
The hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) at the second sitting, described the Bill as altogether vicious, but said at the sixth sitting:
…if there is sufficient pressure…the Government will find some way of bowing to it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee F, 9th December, 1971; c. 271.]
How wrong he was. He also said that he would stop the Measure becoming law and that there were stirring times ahead.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mrs. Doris Fisher) made frequent

and long contributions, although at the first sitting she said:
We do not want to stretch out proceedings of the Bill."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee F, 25th November, 1971; c. 36.]
The hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. John Fraser) accused the Minister of "pressing his luck too far"; yet at the first sitting he asked that there should be no question of a guillotine and wanted over 300 hours' discussion. Yet there he was, pressing the Minister to stop.
The hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy) described the White Paper as ridiculous and at the first sitting said that he would kill the Bill, and spoke of the obnoxious policy of the Bill. When we discussed the sittings motion he said that he was capable of speaking at length and ad nauseam, but he understated his abilities: he has spoken often and at length and ad nauseam.

Mr. Peter Hardy: The hon. Gentleman referred to me, and I thought he was about to quote the limerick which we composed in his honour, which reads as follows:
There was a young man from High Peak
Who sat in Committee all week
He heard what was said
As if he were dead
But nothing could drive him to speak.

Mr. Le Marchant: I have heard that before, but I am glad I gave way to give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity of repeating about the most amusing contribution we had in the Committee proceedings.
I come to the hon. Member for Gates-head, West (Mr. Horam), who said at the first sitting that there would be no filibuster. He promised an honest, sensitive and understanding perusal of the Bill. Those of us who heard him will hardly agree with that.
Then we come to the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham), who during the night and early morning of 28th–29th February spoke for over three hours, but showed so little interest in the Bill that at the end of his speech he went for the rest of the sitting. That is how the Opposition work—by rotation. They are not interested in the Bill. They are interested in making their speeches, and then they go away and return a day or two later.
The hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. McBride) at the third sitting spoke


of a doctrinaire, ruthless Bill and said that ours was the most reactionary Government for 150 years. He said that the present Government were putting up rents to satisfy beliefs. This morning he said he hoped councils would not obey the Bill and will not put its provisions into effect after it becomes law. That is a most serious suggestion to make.
Then I turn to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman), who said that this was the worst housing Bill produced in this country. The hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. David Stoddart) called it an ill-conceived Measure which ought to be dropped. All these examples show that Opposition members did not want to discuss the Bill in Committee. They did not want to do anything other than deliberately filibuster. We know that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) joined the Committee to do everything he possibly could to obstruct. He has told us that he will continue to do everything possible to frustrate the Bill. He is only interested in destroying its provisions.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Le Merchant: The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is probably worse than other hon. Members because he goes outside the House and deliberately incites people to disobey what will become law. He was doing so only yesterday morning in his constituency, not only making this point, but also boasting that he had been responsible for helping to find the information which had been put forward by the hon. Member for Salford, East.

Mr. Peter Rost: While my hon. Friend is dealing with the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), will he not confirm that that hon. Member goes into other people's constituencies, particularly into mine, stirring up trouble with vicious falsehoods about the Bill and without having the courtesy even to advise the hon. Member in whose constituency he is speaking?

Mr. Le Marchant: That is absolutely correct. I hope I have given enough examples to show the House that the Opposition have no intention of discussing the Bill.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Will the hon. Member give way?

Mr. Le Marchant: No, I will not give way.
I was saying that the Opposition have no intention of discussing the Bill. It is an excellent Bill which I commend to the House. A widow in the constituency of Bolsover was recently complaining to me that she, who lived in her own bungalow, was having to subsidise those richer than herself who lived in a council estate at Hindes Green. She said to me "Get this Bill made law." I say to the House that the sooner the Bill is law the better.

4.26 p.m.

Mr. Dick Leonard: Following the eloquent speech of the hon. Member for The High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant), the House will not be surprised to learn that in Standing Committee we have heard a great deal about the views of a considerable number of local authorities and of their tenants in The High Peak constituency, but what its hon. Member did not tell the House is that all that information was given to the Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) because the hon. Member for The High Peak could not be bothered to represent his constituents' views in that Committee.
If the Government are in difficulty over the Bill, as indeed they are, this is entirely their own fault. The source of difficulty goes back to the decision by the Secretary of State for the Environment not to serve on the Committee on his own Bill or, for that matter, on the Committee on the Local Government Bill. The House may think this an extraordinary decision.
We have heard a good deal about absentee Tory landlords. In fact, the Minister for Housing and Construction confessed to the Committee that he is the absentee landlord of some properties in Southwark. However the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) will go down in history as the first absentee Secretary of State too busy to serve on his own Committee, too busy this afternoon to listen to the speech of his right hon. Friend who introduced the guillotine Motion.
As soon as I learned that the Secretary of State was not to serve on the Committee on the Housing Finance Bill, I was consumed with curiosity to discover what


manner of man it was who was to head our deliberations. I went straight to the Library and took out a volume written by a former Member of this House. I opened it at an interesting section entitled "The Character of Julian" and there found some most encouraging remarks:
The throne of Julian…was the seat of reason, of virtue, and perhaps of vanity. He despised the honours, renounced the pleasures, and discharged with incessant diligence the duties of his exalted station…".
Promising stuff! The author goes on:
One of his most intimate friends, who had often shared the frugal simplicity of his table, has remarked that his light and sparing diet left his mind and body always free and active for the various and important business of an author, a pontiff, a magistrate, a general, and a prince…
He listened to the memorials which had been received, considered the subject of the petitions, and signified his intentions more rapidly than could be taken in shorthand…
He possessed such flexibility of thought and such firmness of attention, that he could…pursue at once three separate trains of ideas without hesitations, and without error.
I regret to report that, in the event, the right hon. Gentleman the Minister did not live up to this advance billing. I will cite an example. Edward Gibbon in that passage said that Julian had
listened to the memorials which had been received considered the subject of the petitions…
But this Julian refused to do so. He shut his ears to any representations from those who will be most deeply affected by the Bill, and this means the 5½million council tenants and their families and representatives. In fact the Minister, whom I welcome back to the Chamber, developed a positive mania for non-consultation. He refused to conusult tenants; he refused to consult individual local authorities including my own local authority, the London Borough of Have ring, which asked him to receive deputations to consider the Bill. He even refused to consult his own Chief Whip and Leader of the House, when he descended on the Committee with a ludicrous Sittings Motion at 4.30 in the morning which proposed that we should meet virtually uninterrupted from early Monday morning to late Friday night.

Mr. Frank Allaun: I hope my hon. Friend will remind the House that, although

the Minister is refusing to meet deputations, he is meeting the Press. Yesterday he is reported as saying in a special interview that local authorities will be making a profit out of council houses for the first time and that this will mean that they will have greater freedom in building and design. He can meet the News of the World, but he cannot meet councillors and tenants' associations accompanied by their Members of Parliament.

Mr. Leonard: That is a very apt comment on the conduct of the Minister.
This non-consultation was not only an affront and an insult to people who have every legitimate right to expect to be consulted; it contributed directly to the length of debates on many of the Clauses. As tenants had no opportunity to present their case directly to the Minister, they had to fall back upon Labour Members serving on the Committee to put their case for them. I know that many of my hon. Friends are grateful to organisations such as the Association of London Housing Estates, which gave us a number of Amendments to be moved from our side of the Committee and supplied material in support of those Amendments. But having to put these points in Committee, which the Minister should have listened to beforehand, inevitably slowed up the proceedings.
I give one example. As hon. Members know, the purpose of Clause 57 is to enable representatives of local scrutiny boards to inspect dwellings "at all reasonable times". They are required to given tenants only seven days' notice of their intention to inspect dwellings, while tenants are liable to fines of up to £50 if they refuse to allow inspections to take place. Clause 57 was so badly drafted that it was criticised from all sides of the Committee. One Conservative Member, the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) described it as a "bludgeon", and another the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Idris Owen) said that it was "a sledgehammer to crack a nut". The result is that the Clause is having to be completely re-examined in the Department before Report. The Minister has undertaken that the length of notice given to a tenant, his right to object if a visit will be inconvenient and the size of the fine will all be looked at again before Report.
There are other reasons why the Government have got themselves into timetable difficulties. My right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) has outlined them with great force and precision. But in my view the refusal by Ministers to engage in the normal processes of consultation is at the root of the predicament in which they now find themselves.
The solution to this predicament is apparent. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite must now swallow their pride and listen—listen to those whose counsel they refused to take at an earlier stage. The advice which they will get is crystal clear. They will be told that this is a harsh, oppressive and unjust Measure which should be dropped or at least put into cold storage.
If the Government want to help solve the housing problem, if they want to help solve the problem of inflation, if they want to build up a relationship of trust with millions of tenants throughout the country, this is what they should do. It is intolerable that they are seeking today not to do this but to put a gag on proper parliamentary discussion of this bad, bad Bill.

4.34 p.m.

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: I am grateful to have this opportunity to intervene briefly in support of the Government's timetable Motion with regard to the remaining stages of the Housing Finance Bill—

Mrs. Renée Short: Shame.

Mrs. Oppenheim: To those of us who are also members of the Standing Committee which is considering this Bill—

Mr. Hardy: Part-time.

Mrs. Oppenheim: — inevitably there is an air of déjà vu about this debate, not only with regard to the faces of hon. Members opposite who also serve on the Standing Committee and who have, after 200 hours of debate, acquired a certain familiarity, but also with regard to their arguments which have recurred with monotonous regularity during the seemingly endless succession of days and nights that we have spent discussing the

Bill. The only change would appear to be the venue.
We on this side of the House accept entirely that an important and fundamental piece of legislation as this Bill should be the subject of lengthy and detailed debate in Committee. We have spent some 200 hours already in Committee in what I understand is an unprecedented number and length of weekly sittings. If all this time had been used constructively and usefully, it would have been time well spent. But that has not always been the case.
It is true that we on this side have moved Amendments and intervened briefly. But we have denied ourselves the luxury of speaking at length simply in order to give right hon. and hon. Members opposite as much opportunity as possible to advance their arguments.
At the same time, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has been the subject of congratulations from right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite for his courteous and informative replies, which have never been prolonged unduly. Therefore, I think that we should consider exactly how much time has been spent on constructive debate and how much has not.
As my right hon. Friend said earlier, some nine hours have been spent on points of order and some 12 hours on sittings and adjournment Motions. But as a result of some very careful research that is fully documented and can be laid before the House if necessary, I have some figures which I believe are a devastating indictment of the use of Committee time by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. Since 1st February the Committee has sat for some 136 hours, during which time on no fewer than 344 occasions hon. Members opposite have been ruled out of order because of the irrelevancy of their remarks to the Amendment or Clause being debated. On a further 84 occasions they have raised points of order which have been ruled out of order. In addition, they have been responsible for another 52 miscellaneous and residual infringements of order, bringing the grand total to 480—[Interruption.] I can assure the lion. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mrs. Doris Fletcher) who is attempting to


intervene from a sealed position and is herself out of order—

Mrs. Doris Fisher: Mrs. Doris Fisher (Birmingham, Ladywood) rose—

Mr. Eddie Griffiths: Mr. Eddie Griffiths (Sheffield, Brightside) rose—

Mrs. Oppenheim: On a very conservative—

Mr. Eddie Griffiths: On a point of order. It is obvious that the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim) has devoted a great deal of time and energy to her research. Having produced all these facts, would not it be in order for her to make some attempt to restore the balance and give a fair picture by making the point that, if the contributions from hon. Members opposite serving on the Standing Committee had been added together, the Committee stage of the Bill would have finished on the first day?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu): I am afraid that that is not a point of order.

Mrs. Oppenheim: The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) himself has been responsible for a considerable number of points of order, the majority of them concerned with his stomach and the provision of hot meals during the night.
On a very conservative estimate, this total of 480 infringements of order has resulted in the Committee spending some 32 hours out of order. I base that calculation on a very generous estimate of two minutes for each irrelevancy or bogus point of order and two minutes for each ruling. My calculations take no account of long filibustering speches which may not have been out of order but which certainly were prolonged unduly.
I thought that it was very unworthy of the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) to compare the number of points of order in a Committee on which 38 hon. Members serve with the number of points of order on the Floor of the House where there are 630 Members.
These tactics, about which some hon. Members opposite have been privately boasting to each other, have devastated and made a travesty of the Committee's proceedings. As a result, they cannot

argue with any credibility that they have used all the time available to them for serious discussion. Indeed, with one or two notable exceptions—I certainly mention here the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. John Fraser), who has made some valuable contributions in Committee—it was never their intention to do other than delay and obstruct the Bill.
As my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant) said, some very revealing remarks were made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside. On 6th March, 1972, at columns 3349, 3351 and 3352, the hon. Gentleman is clearly on record as saying:
However often we sit, however long, however many days we put in, it will not bring the finality of our Committee stage any nearer.
In answer to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak, the hon. Gentleman said:
I joined the Committee to do everything I possibly could to obstruct it. I shall continue to do so.
The hon. Gentleman went on:
The Minister will not get the Bill in a reasonable time. He will have to fight far longer than he ever dreamed of fighting for the Committee stage.
Most revealingly, the hon. Gentleman concluded:
If the Minister wants this Bill he will have to exploit every avenue of Parliamentary procedure available to him."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 6th March, 1972; c. 3349–52.]
That demonstrates their clear intention Therefore, the Government have every right to take steps to defend their legislation against such tactics. It is sheer hypocrisy for right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite to vote against the Motion tonight, a Motion for which, by their tactics, they have begged, beseeched and implored.

4.42 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Latham: First, I should like to congratulate the hon. Members for The High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant) and Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim) on having commented on the Bill, even though this is a debate on a guillotine Motion, and, secondly, on being so well briefed about what has happened in Committee, because we have come to regard both as birds of passage. They flitted in and out of the Committee so often that I began to wonder whether they were collectively suffering from some


kind of overdose in consequence of the revelry and champaigne in Committee Room 7.
With respect to the hon. Member for The High Peak, who has now returned—one gathers that "Peak" should be spelt "pique"—the fact that he opened the debate from the back bench suggests, and his performance confirmed, that the Government do not take the matter seriously. Even though we may have been in a mood of flippancy for the last 20 minutes or so, I now want to come back to an extremely serious matter.
From outside the House I have always worried about the guillotine procedure. Whichever Government use the guillotine device, they are using a very unpleasant instrument. I have grave doubts about the circumstances in which it can be justified. I was in Parliament for only the last seven months of the previous Administration. However, I do not believe that during that time I was called upon to make what would be a difficult decision—namely, to vote for my own Government's proposal for a guillotine Motion. I give notice to the Chief Whip now and whoever may be Chief Whip in future that I for one would need very strong persuasion indeed if a future Labour Government sought to introduce a guillotine Motion. Certainly if they sought to introduce such a Motion in the circumstances in which we are asked to approve this Motion, I should be unable to go into the Lobby with my own party.

Mr. Nicholas Scott: We would, clearly, like the Opposition Chief Whip not to misunderstand the representation being made to him. Is the hon. Gentleman making it clear that, in the event of his being present during any future Labour Government, he would not vote for any kind of timetable Motion on any important Bill which had had 200 hours of discussion in Committee?

Mr. Latham: I shall come to that point, Perhaps I may say that if that were to happen the hon. Gentleman would have the opportunity of watching from the public gallery.
There are two extremes. At one extreme, it is wrong for the Government to force through legislation without its having had thorough and proper scrutiny At the other extreme, it is to be acknowledged

that it is wrong for the Opposition to frustrate and delay the majority view of the House by undue procrastination. Somewhere between those two extremes there is a proper balance to be drawn.
The serious issue to which we should be applying our minds today is whether we have reached the situation where the Government have no alternative but to use the unpleasant device of the guillotine. In support of the contention that it is an extraordinarily unpleasant device, from inquiries which I have made about the way that it will apply I find that the guillotine is aptly described as an axe, because it is likely to be used in consequence of paragraph 10 of the Motion as a very blunt instrument indeed.
I understand that if on a particular Clause five Opposition Amendments had been selected by the Chairman and the time which was considered should be devoted to that Clause and those Amendments was in the region of two hours, which I suggest is the time likely to be available to us on a reasonable arithmetical calculation, and those two hours were spent on discussing thoroughly and properly the first Amendment, with absolute regard to the rules of order and relevancy, the situation would be that there would be a Division on that Amendment, and the remaining four Amendments would fall entirely. They would not be called and subjected to a vote; only Amendments which had been tabled by the Government would be eligible for a vote. That is the extraordinarily blunt way in which the axe can operate, and it illustrates that the opportunities for proper and detailed scrutiny of the remaining Clauses of the Bill will be denied to the Committee in consequence of the Motion.
Great emphasis has been laid on the fact that the Committee has had 45 sittings. It is true that it has taken approaching 4,000 columns in HANSARD and getting on for 200 hours of debate. Why? Is this a simple nine-Clause Bill? No. This is a Bill of 103 Clauses and 11 Schedules of very detailed small print, and it comprises 158 pages. Every Clause has considerable complexities because this is a most extraordinarily comprehensive Measure. It is the first Housing Bill in recorded history—never mind the merits, which we deplore—which has


tackled private and public sector housing, housing associations, and virtually every other form of housing of which one can think.

Mr. Frank Allaun: My hon. Friend is illustrating the important and unprecedented nature of the Bill. As the Bill affects roughly half the population and makes a serious increase in their weekly expenditure, it should not be brought under the guillotine procedure, but, indeed, should be discussed on the Floor of the House, because not only 37 M.P.s but certainly, as far as I know, almost every hon. Member on this side wants to discuss it.

Mr. Latham: My hon. Friend is right. I was coming to the point that the Bill affects 7 million tenants in all, which represents far in excess of 20 million people. That is the magnitude of the Bill. That is its importance in terms of the ordinary working people of this nation.
When one talks about the amount of time spent in Committee, one has to relate that to the magnitude of the Bill, to the complexity of it, and to the fact that it embraces so many sectors of housing. To add to what was said by my hon. Friend, a reasonable calculation shows that, on average, the Bill will take £100 per head per year out of the pockets of ordinary working families. Any Measure that is likely to have that effect warrants the kind of detailed consideration which the Bill has been receiving in Committee.
The Committee upstairs has reached Clause 70. If one relates those 70 Clauses to the 189 hours that have been quoted one realises that that is not an unreasonable amount of time to have spent on scrutinising and examining the Bill. Some Amendments and some Clauses have gone through somewhat more speedily than others, and rather more hastily than some of us would have wished, but that has been done so that we could concentrate on the most vital and at the same time the objectionable parts of the Bill.
Reference has been made—and no doubt will be made again—to the length of speeches in Committee, but it has been made clear by the admirable Chairman

of the Committee—whether he is right in this or not is something that I shall leave aside—that the amount of time spent collectively in debating an Amendment or a Clause is something that he takes into account before a Closure is accepted. Generally speaking, it means that if one hon. Member speaks for an hour, or an hour and a half, other hon. Members are denied the opportunity of making a contribution. It therefore cannot be claimed that there has been delay or filibustering. Similarly, there have been occasions when one or two of us have felt that we have been somewhat in deficit and have not been able to make what we thought were pertinent points on Clauses and Amendments which had a direct bearing on the matter under discussion.
If some of those who comment adversely about our conduct as an Opposition in the Committee would stay in the room long enough, or if those who are not members of the Committee would listen to the debates, they would find that the charge made against us is the opposite of the truth. They would find that we show considerable restraint and absolute dedication to relevancy during our discussions.
It may be argued that on two occasions hon. Members burst into song, but those were exceptional occurrences. The first time was when, for about 40 seconds, we celebrated the birthday of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). The second was an occasion when, appropriately, we acknowledged Wales on St. David's Day.

Mr. Eddie Griffiths: I am glad that my hon. Friend has acknowledged the presence of Wales, because the Government, by the absence of the Secretary of State for Wales and his Minister of State, have ignored and insulted the Principality during the proceedings in Committee.

Mr. Latham: I hope that my hon. Friend will not take it amiss if I say that the Principality is well represented on our Committee by a Scotsman.
The Times Dairy on Friday referred to "Limericks as last resort". One can often express in a few short lines of verse what might otherwise take several columns of HANSARD. These matters can sometimes be dealt with extremely economically in Committee. On Friday when I


spoke in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) I was able to save a great deal of time by telling the people there:
There was an M.P. named James,
Who spoke in the House many tames,
But when we sat up at night
Discussing tenants' rights,
He might as well have been in the Thames.
That could be said of the majority of Government Members on that Committee.
I associate myself with the tribute paid by the hon. Lady the Member for Gloucester to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for South end, West (Mr. Channon), whose contributions have been lucid and who has not always spoken with brevity. I have had some research done, and I find that he has far outdone me in terms of time spent on debate, but that is understandable, because he is about the only Member on the Government benches from whom we have had contributions. There can be no criticism of the Under-Secretary on that ground, because he has had to speak for about 20 Government Members serving on that Committee.
One of the things that has struck me as most surprising is that because of the Macmillan-Churchillian axis which has been operating in the Committee upstairs I believed that there would not be a guillotine. From the right hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Mr. Amery), who has been egged on by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill), we have experienced a kind of Churchillian doggedness, inspired particularly by the grandson of Winston, which led us to believe that there would be absolute determination, and complete tenacity and pugnacity, in pressing on to the end. In fact, we had Churchillian oratory from the right hon. Gentleman in the early hours of the morning—or the nearest thing to it that he could reach—dedicating himself, and us, to Queen and country to serve all night in the interests of putting up the rents of 20 million tenants.
What struck me as extraordinary was that despite that Churchillian doggedness it took only a couple of sentences from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) for them to collapse like a house of cards and introduce the guillotine. I am

astonished that after their willingness to sit at all hours they should at this stage in our proceedings have come forward in this rather shamefaced way and abandoned all their previous determination in order to ask that the axe should fall. It is a commentary on the priorities of the Government that with more than 1 million unemployed, with the problems of Northern Ireland, and faced with economic problems of inflation, rising prices, and so on, the one Measure which they single out for priority, the one Measure to which they propose to apply the guillotine, is that which is calculated to clobber council tenants and raise their rents by extremely unfair amounts.
I think that the whole situation can be summed up by saying that this is an indecent Bill which the Government are trying to push through the House with indecent haste.

4.57 p.m.

Mr. Norman Tebbit: As ever, my intervention will be brief. It will have in it a few quotations. It will not refer at any length to the merits or the demerits of the Bill, because to do so seems to be largely irrelevant to the issue of the Motion before us.
What is relevant is whether the proceedings in Committee are grinding so slowly along as to lead us to the conclusion that the Opposition are indulging in a filibuster which is designed to frustrate the intent of the House, as expressed on the Second Reading of the Bill. The Committee proceedings have occupied 3,700 columns, or whatever it is, of the OFFICIAL REPORT, and we are up to Clause 70. There have been 45 Sittings, some extremely long and wearisome.
I quote the Local Government Chronicle of 10th March which mentions the decision of the Committee to sit on Mondays as well as on Tuesdays and Thursdays:
But despite the additional day, Clause 65 was still under consideration on 29th February. Much of the delay has been caused by extremely lengthy and often irrelevant contributions, such as the discussion on interesting uses for the name Julian.
There has been a little more of it today. We had a classic illustration of precisely the points which were being made when the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) obligingly gave a demonstration of how


to waste time on a bogus point of order. There could have been no more convincing demonstration.
The quotation which I made is the voice of a disinterested observer.

Mr. Eddie Griffiths: While the Hon. Gentleman is carrying out his perusal of what has gone on in Committee, will he place on record for how many hours to date he has slept in the Committee and in adjoining rooms during the Committee's proceedings?

Mr. William Molloy: He is not awake now.

Mr. Tebbit: Again, one has a fairly typical example. Perhaps we might ask how many hours the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) or the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) or any other hon. Member has slept during the proceedings of the Committee. We are only flesh and blood, and it has been pretty sorely tried on many occasions. The view of the interested party of course has been well put already in the quotations from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside—determined absolutely to have a guillotine.
We have had some extraordinary proceedings. I regret that the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Leonard) is not here, because one of the most extraordinary was from him. The hon. Member and I have shared a platform on which we both agreed that we wanted to see this country go into Europe, yet he said in Committee that he wanted to be down here, not merely to eat his words but to have them rammed down his throat in a public humiliation by being whipped through that Lobby when he should have been in this one. What an extraordinary position to take.
Not all hon. Members opposite have behaved badly. The right hon. Member for Grimsby is normally to the point and brief. We all take note of this. Tribute has already been paid today to the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. John Fraser)—

Mr. John Fraser: Leave me alone.

Mr. Tebbit: The hon. Member should take his compliments wherever he gets them.
I speak for all of us on this side I think when I say that he has always spoken with admirable clarity and without excessive wordiness. Whoever else's speeches I may sleep through, I always wake up for his.

Mr. Molloy: The hon. Member says that he listens only to the speeches of my hon. Friend. I assume from that that he may now be talking in his sleep.

Mr. Tebbit: I should have resisted the temptation to let the hon. Member intervene—[Interruption.] I did not say that. I said that whoever else's speeches I may sleep through, I will always listen to those of the hon. Member for Norwood.
But when one comes to the rambling, multi-clause—one might even say megaclause—efforts of the hon. Member for Willesden, East or some of his hon. Friends, one can only conclude that the purpose of them is to take up time rather than to illuminate and to persuade. I recommend anyone who is not a member of the Committee, if he doubts my words, to turn to the OFFICIAL REPORT.
Then we have the famous three-and-a-half hour ramble at pedestrian pace through the by-ways of the Bill by the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham). Abraham Lincoln summed up the attitude of many hon. Members opposite when speaking of a colleague of his who was also a lawyer:
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I have ever met.
It also reminded me of the words of a friend of mine, who, some years ago—I emphasise that, because things have changed now—said of a day spent in Toronto:
I spent a fortnight there one Sunday afternoon.
That is what some of the Opposition speeches have felt like.
From time to time, we have had these lovely escapades when suddenly, during the speech, perhaps, of one of the Opposition Front Bench spokesmen, Opposition Members have all run away, playing the good old game "Let's not have a quorum." It is a legitimate parliamentary tactic, but does it accord with the ambition to get on with the Clause-by-Clause sensible discussion of the Bill?
I am in absolute accord with the intent of the Bill. In one area it was defective, and that was in the provisions relating to


housing associations. But the Government have brought forward Amendments in that area. So I have willingly given and will continue to give the Floor primarily to Opposition Members who are not satisfied. That is right.
I end with the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, Chapter V, Verses 2 and 3—

Mr. Molloy: Is he on the Committee, too?

Mr. Tebbit: At least we can be grateful for one small mercy: that the hon. Member is not.
He will like these words of Ecclesiastes:
Be not rash with thy mouth…let they words be few…a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.
We cannot end foolishness by edict of this House, but at least we can limit it by passing this Motion.

5.5 p.m.

Mr. John Horam: The proposition before us is that, after Standing Committee E, which has become famous in the annals of this Parliament if nothing else, has spent 200 hours examining 70 Clauses out of 103, which have contained the real meat of the Bill, the Government are no longer prepared to abide by the normal parliamentary procedures of scrutiny.
Perhaps the Government feel that the stamina of their own Members is collapsing. It is well known that Labour Members are more resolute and conscientious. Certainly they are more experienced in housing matters. We have noticed that, occasionally, hon. Members opposite have had resort to drink at early hours of the morning to sustain them, while we have made do with the Tearoom cocoa, a much less sustaining beverage.
But we must be charitable. I would not attribute any base motives to the Government. The ostensible reason for this guillotine is that they cannot get the Bill on schedule. They want to get the Bill by July in order to put on the increases in October. But we are still only in March. We have discussed 70 Clauses of the Bill. The Leader of the House said today that what remains is of lesser importance—as indeed it is. I should not have thought that we could fail to complete the Bill by the end of April or early May, even taking into account the

full powers of my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham).
If so, we should have two and a half months, ample time to complete the remaining stages. It is not unprecedented for a Bill which completes its Committee stage in May to receive the Royal Assent by the end of July. The Gas Bill of the 1945 Labour Government did precisely that—and that was a controversial Measure. But the reason why that succeeded and the present Government are failing is that that was the main Bill of that Session. The present Government have many other Bills going through Parliament at this time. That is the real reason for the guillotine—not the progress or lack of it on Standing Committee E but the legislative log jam which they face on all fronts. It is not our fault, although they are trying to pin it on us. Hon. Members opposite who regard themselves as interested in housing should think twice before voting for a Measure of this kind if they want to do justice to our people and to their own sincerity.
The Times, to continue the quotation of my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland), thought that the guillotining of the Bill had nothing to do with progress of the Bill but was because of the general trouble the Government are in on all fronts, and I agree. If that is so, I do not think this Bill or this kind of Bill should be guillotined.
The Under-Secretary is fond of saying, as a kind of shorthand to get round a few arguments, that there is a wide gulf between the two sides which he acknowledges. That is so. The Opposition have said repeatedly that the Bill is not about housing. We wish it were. We wish that it did something to produce more houses and to improve existing houses, including council houses. But it does nothing toward that. It is concerned with the distribution of income in this country, the unequal distribution of income and the use of public resources to mitigate that inequality. It bears most on those who can least afford it, with one exception, which I will grant the Government, and that is the introduction of allowances for the private landlord sector. With that exception we believe the whole focus of the Bill will bear hardest on those who can least afford it.
The Government say that they are concentrating help on those who need it


most, and this is a familiar argument from a number of hon. Members on the Government side. We argue that this is true in only a limited and superficial way. The major effect is the reduction in general subsidies to the tune of £300 million by the end of the 1970s with consequent increases in rents which will fall most heavily and most directly on those who do not own the houses in which they live, and who are, by and large, at the bottom of the income scale. If there were any doubt about that, it would be more than eliminated by the fact that the Government are doing nothing to change the general subsidy which goes to owner occupiers or even to relate it more closely to those owner occupiers who need it most.
In these circumstances, to highlight the fact that the diminished subsidies will become more closely related to need is to argue in a very disingenuous way. It is wholly to ignore that in order to get that closer correlation with need the Government are to introduce a whole plethora of means tests going beyond all reason or all precedent in any society.
The Government know that we deeply dislike the Bill. Hon. Members opposite have today and in Committee expressed their distaste for and their dislike of our tactics, but they cannot doubt the sincerity which lies behind our approach. If they are honest they will admit that, irrespective of the tactics in which the two sides have perforce to indulge there lies on this side of the House a very deep and sincere belief that the Bill is wholly and completely wrong and that is touches the very core of Labour Party thinking. The first Labour Government ever elected created council housing in its present form with the Wheatley Act, and such legislation touches deep emotional springs in the Labour Movement.
Hon. Members opposite acknowledge that beneath the banter and beneath their attack on the way in which we have conducted affairs there has been far, more wit and humour than could reasonably have been expected through the dismal hours of the night. It is obvious that we greatly dislike the Bill. It is a highly ideological and controversial Bill which many people outside, quite independent of politics, will dislike. It is

precisely the kind of Bill that should not be guillotined. I believe that the Government will regret their impatience.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Timothy Raison: I will return in a moment to the last and quite serious points which the hon. Member for Gateshead, West (Mr. Horam) has just made about the Bill. So far this afternoon the debate has been characterised by a half holiday atmosphere. The fact that we have been allowed out of Committee Room 11 for the afternoon has probably had a good deal to do with this. We have also heard a repetition of familiar jokes from the Committee Room. I do not know whether hon. Members who are not members of the Committee will understand them but they have become a part of the apparatus of the exercise.
The badinage should not hide the fact that in the last few sittings of the Committee the rate of progress on the Bill has diminished sharply. When hon. Members claim that over a certain period of sittings a certain number of Clauses have been covered, they do not say that the rate of progress has dropped very sharply in recent sittings. I do not doubt that a few days or may be a week or two ago the Opposition deliberately decided to bring about a guillotine. They wanted to be able to say to their council house tenants, "Look at those wicked Tories; they have guillotined discussion on the Bill" and every hon. Member—

Mr. Molloy: Mr. Molloy rose—

Mr. Raison: I will not give way. Every hon. Member on the Committee on the Opposition side knows this was so. I am not sure whether it was the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham) in his three and a quarter hour diatribe or oration which started this but I cannot help thinking of the famous passage of Macaulay's essay on Dr. Nares' Life of Burleigh where at the beginning he says:
The title is as long as an ordinary preface; the prefatory matter would furnish an ordinary book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library.…Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shalun. But unhappily the life of man is now three score years and ten; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short an existence.


I would apply those words to the hon. Member for Paddington, North's speech and say that I cannot think it anything but unfair of the hon. Member to demand from us so large a portion of what has been a long Committee stage.

Mr. Latham: Will the hon. Member recall that on several occasions, when it was suggested during that contribution from the Government side and on one or two other occasions from the Chair that certain of my hon. Friends might be deprived of the opportunity to speak, they were happy with the situation. Will he confirm that I offered to conclude my remarks if anyone on the Government side of the Committee was for once prepared to enter into the debate and no one took up the challenge?

Mr. Raison: The hon. Member for Paddington, North was applying tactics then as he is now. There is no doubt that the Opposition have been seeking a guillotine for some time now and the question is why they should have done so. I acknowledge that they have a general feeling of opposition to the Bill and that this has been a part, but only a part, of their approach. The operation has also been designed to cast a smokescreen over the total lack of alternative policy to be offered by the Labour Party. I was interested earlier to see the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) attending the debate. I can only hope that in one of his forthcoming speeches he will offer the Labour Party a policy for housing because it quite manifestly has not been able to think up one for itself.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Mr. Frank Allaun rose—

Mr. Raison: I want to be brief.

Mr. Allaun: Then the hon. Member should not make unfounded allegations.

Mr. Raison: In the Clause in the Bill which introduces the principle of fair rents in the council sector, we have had from hon. Members opposite something like five different alternative policies. We had the official policy of treating pooled historic costs as a maximum, but only a maximum; we had the policy put forward by the second Front Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson), which seemed to suggest treating pooled historic costs as

the genuine basis as opposed to simply a maximum; the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) talked in terms of a system of unpooled historic costs; the hon. Member for Kensington, North (Mr. Douglas-Mann) would like to see rents related to average earnings in a particular area covered by the local authority; and the principle of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) was simply to keep rents as low as possible. That there are no fewer than five separate answers shows that the Opposition have not thought out what they would do if they were in power. The remarkable thing was that in spite of that divergence they managed to vote with total unanimity in favour of their Amendment. The truth is that the Opposition have not got a housing policy.
I should like to say a few words about why the Bill gives a chance to move forward in housing and to quote a brief passage from a book published by the Fabian Society, "Labour and In equality". I have quoted from it in Committee in a slightly party political and polemical vein, but I have now picked out a passage that lays bare what is at the heart of our housing problem. It is a passage from an essay by Professor Peter Hall—

Mr. Latham: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Those of us who have spoken so far have generally refrained from anything other than passing references to the merits of the Bill, on the understanding that this was a debate on a guillotine Motion. I raise this point of order in view of what the hon. Gentleman is now embarking upon and also because he has not availed himself of the opportunity to put these points in Committee but now seeks to put them in a debate on a guillotine Motion.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham) is right in saying that the main intention of the Bill is not the subject of this debate.

Mr. Raison: The hon. Member for Gateshead, West devoted a fair part of his speech to an attack on the principles of the Bill. I shall not deal with that at great length, but I think it not unreasonable that I should say at least something in reply to the point the hon. Gentleman


validly made. In the essay which Opposition Members are trying to gag, Professor Hall said:
In her study of housing in Camden, Ruth Glass has clearly shown the haphazardness of current housing policies even in a progressive local authority area. Only about 30 per cent of all households of semi-skilled or unskilled workers were in the council sector, while of those in unfurnished privately rented dwellings no less than 45 per cent had less than £16 a week, 28 per cent of them less than £12. (The corresponding figures for furnished, privately rented accommodation were 54 and 26 per cent). Of those with under £12 a week, no less than 45 per cent. of the unfurnished and 78 per cent. of the furnished tenants were paying one-third or more of their income on housing. As Ruth Glass comments, the poor are paying more, because many are paying no less than three supplementary housing taxes: on central area accommodation, on furnished accommodation and on accommodation for newcomers. These are the people who continue to suffer most from the existing bundle of policies.
I am sure Professor Hall is right. These are the people who are suffering most under existing policy, but they are also the people who will benefit from the Bill. The Opposition know this. The first reason why they will benefit is that the Bill applies rebates or rent allowances to private tenants, something that should have been done many years ago. The Milner Holland Report recommended it in 1965, and the Labour Government failed to take action on the matter. It will apply to unfurnished private tenants, and I have every confidence that my right hon. Friend will extend it shortly to furnished private tenants. I only ask him to bring that into the Bill.
The Bill also spreads decontrol. Labour hon. Members know, as we all do, that control has had the effect of lowering the whole standard and quality of housing. It is vital to get rid of control, because it is a formula for perpetuating slumdom.
Thirdly, the Bill introduces fair rents into the council sector. The merits of that, which we have debated in Committee, are that it provides for the first time an equitable system as between all sectors of the community, between the council tenant and the private tenant, and between one area and another.
For those reasons I consider it to be of the greatest importance that we should get on with the Bill rather than be subjected to more filibustering from the Opposition.

5.26 p.m.

Mr. Stanley Cohen: The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), who remained silent for so long in Committee, has abused the rights of the House by taking up valuable time during his speech, when we should have been discussing the guillotine Motion, to express points of view which he could have expressed adequately in Committee and will no doubt have the opportunity to express adequately in Committee when we resume.
The Motion is the result of one of two things—acomplete failure by the Government to appreciate both the controversial and important nature of the Bill, or, more likely, a blatant contempt by the Minister for Housing and Construction and his right hon. and hon. Friends for the House and its democratic processes and for the need to protect the rights of about 50 per cent. of those who reside in properties in this country.
Like my hon. Friends, I am reflecting on the number of times when the right hon. Gentleman has categorically denied in Committee that he had any intention of moving a guillotine Motion. I am sure he regards it as rather a sad blow to his ego that he has had to take this step. All sorts of subtle methods have been tried. The right hon. Gentleman once moved a sittings Motion requiring us to sit five days a week. Fortunately, the powers-that-be brought pressure to bear, and within a short time the right hon. Gentleman changed that requirement. But he told the Committee, like a paragon of virtue, that his sole object was to provide us with sufficient time to discuss the Bill Clause by Clause, line by line, detail by detail. The real object of that proposal, and the arrangements now in operation in Committee, was to limit discussion, creating a situation in which those of us taking part in the discussion in Committee were unable to find time to do the research work needed to be constructive and not, as Conservative Members have suggested, to filibuster, when the Committee was sitting 12–18 hours a day, five days a week. Understandably, hon. Members serving on the Committee would find it extremely difficult to devote the necessary time to the work of the Committee. Therefore, to talk about giving us ample time to discuss the detail of the Bill in the fullest way was ridiculous.
The hon. Member for the High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant) called out what I can only describe as a roll of honour of Opposition Members. I felt rather disappointed that I was not included for reference. Heaven protect us from our friends! With friends like that we do not need enemies.
There were references in the hon. Gentleman's speech and that of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim) to the conduct of Opposition Members. The responsibility was ours to analyse, discuss and amend, if necessary, the Bill because little support was forthcoming from hon. Members opposite. It would be fair to say that they were the "silent majority". On most occasions when they decided to raise their weary bodies and interrupt the discussions, they had to be called to order by the Chairman for irrelevance.
This is where I would like to take the hon. Member for Gloucester to task. She has obviously spent a considerable amount of time and money on research. I wish the same amount of time and money had been spent on research to deal with the Bill itself. It is interesting to note that, despite all her effort, only one side was presented by the hon. Lady. When I have the opportunity, I would like to ask her if, in listing the amount of time devoted to hon. Members on this side being called to order, she would also itemise the amount of time we were called to order resulting from her hon. Friends being out of order. This was the case in about 50 per cent. of the time.
We have been told that 200 hours have been occupied by the Committee. I do not believe that to be excessive. Despite what the Minister might say, we must remember that 70 Clauses have been dealt with in those 200 hours—an average of three hours per Clause. Considering the importance of all the Clauses in the Bill, the Government have no cause to complain about the rate of progress.
Indeed, the statements made today by hon. Members opposite have strengthened my case. We have been told that nine hours were spent on points of order and 21 hours on Closure Motions, while, according to the hon. Lady, 32 hours were spent on matters which were out of order. This is a total of 62 hours. Taking the 62 away from 200, we are

left 138 hours, and I challenge hon. Members opposite to continue to accuse us of filibustering when, on that calculation, we have got through 70 Clauses and about 140 Amendments in 138 hours. The Government have no cause for complaint about our conduct.
There have been personal references in the debate, and I do not want to engage in personalities, with one or two exceptions. In view of what the hon. Lady has said about the conduct of some of my hon. Friends leading to being called to order, I recall an occasion when she had to be called to order for dictating to her secretary in Committee. I shall not estimate how much time that took of the Committee's work. I am open to challenge here, but I recall that for 80 or 90 per cent. of the time she was not present in Committee but was outside in the corridor or in Room 10 sleeping along with some of her hon. Friends. I am sure that there were always more than two—let us put that in order.

Mr. Eddie Griffiths: Is my hon. Friend aware that on two occasions certainly the hon. Lady had her sleeping bag with her as well?

Mr. Cohen: I saw it. It was a most delicate blue.
The fact is that we oppose this Bill, and we make no apology for having done so and for continuing to do so. We regard it as totally unjust and probably the most divisive and dictatorial piece of legislation that this Government, who claimed that they were going to unite the nation, have yet introduced. I assure the House that both in this Chamber and in Committee, and in the country outside, we shall argue our case against the Bill because of what we think of it, because of the effect we know it will have on the vast majority of local authority tenants, and because it takes away from local authorities the right to make their own decisions in the light of what they consider to be the interests of those who elected them. As so many other hon. members wish to speak, I close on that point.

5.35 p.m.

Mr. Sydney Chapman: As one who has suffered very deeply and personally and, I fear,


irrevocably from serving on the Standing Committee, I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Leeds, South-East (Mr. Cohen). The only excuse I have been able to give my constituents on returning very late for a late weekend is that I have spent my nights with my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim). My credibility as a bachelor has soared as a result.
In a sense, the hon. Gentleman is right in saying that we on our side have been the silent majority. Apart from what I hope were helpful interventions, I have spoken but once in the Committee, and that was to introduce an Amendment of such conciseness and of such quality that it was immediately accepted by the Government.
I welcome this Motion because it puts an end to an increasingly absurd situation. Of course the Opposition can say, with a certain amount of truth, that the Government supporters have not spoken so much and appear—the impression is quite wrong—to be uninterested in what is, after all, an historic if somewhat controversial Bill. Of course we on this side can say that the Opposition have been delaying and filibustering, certainly on certain occasions, though perhaps not on others. I am entitled to say to the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham) that hon. Members on both sides want speeches in this Chamber which are not too long, but it would be wrong of me to suggest that no speech should be more than half an hour or 15 minutes long, but a speech which lasts for over three hours on an Amendment in Committee is pushing things a bit too far.
I say to the hon. Member for Gateshead, West (Mr. Horam), whose contributions in Committee I have much enjoyed, that it would be wrong if he were to give the impression that we on our side of the Committee have never been there while hon. Members opposite always have. I refer him to the last all-night sitting. Early in the morning of 7th March, from Division No. 131 at 1.40 a.m. to Division No. 135 at 6.45 a.m., although the Government have a nominal majority of three, we had majorities of seven, eight and nine. We can throw these charges

and counter-charges around but they do not get us any further.
Although the Committee has been considering the Bill for about 200 hours, with one exception none of us has been there the whole time. That is a bad thing for the Committee and for the Bill. The one exception, of course, has been my hon. Friend the Member for Rye (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine), the Chairman of the Committee, whose patience is a wondrous marvel to behold, far exceeding that of Job, and whose temper must be as even as a billiard table. It is ironic to realise that he is the one person who cannot comment on the Bill when it comes back on Report. Yet he is the one person who has been there the whole time.
I believe that it is the system which is at fault. Let us face the fact that the rules are such that the Government want the Bill as quickly as possible and it is convenient for them to have it as quickly as possible, so their supporters tend to keep quiet. Let us also face the fact that the Opposition, rightly or wrongly, want to stop the Bill and delay the Committee stage as long as possible. It is no exaggeration to say that, and it is literally true that we have been playing an artificial cat and mouse game week in and week out until the Government realised that they could not get the Committee stage without wasting half a day on the Floor of the House with this Motion.
The result of all this is that the quality of debate in Committee has suffered and that consequently the prestige of Parliament has declined further. It was a false assumption to think that no one was taking notice what we were doing. One only has to read the popular Press to realise that people outside think that we have only done three things—sat ungodly hours, sung "Land of my Fathers" and hurled limericks at each other across the floor of the Committee.
The technical Press has been taking notice of what we have said. Our prestige and our authority have suffered. Anyone who doubts that should read "In Standing Committee" in the Local Government Review of 11thMarch. That is just one example, and I will not bore the House by mentioning others.
I make the simple proposition that there should be a voluntary timetable


agreed before any Bill goes to Committee. If a voluntary timetable cannot be agreed, the Government should propose a timetable, acceptable to the House, before a Bill goes to Committee, and the Opposition should have the right to decide how to use at least 80 per cent. of that time.
I understand the opposition to that view and its sincerity. But to have such a procedure would not be a denial of democracy. Indeed, it would further democracy, because all Bills would be better and more efficiently examined. Some Bills might need only 50 hours in Committee, and I do not deny that this one might need 250—I am not competent to say. But a timetable Motion could and should and would be agreed for most Bills if we had that form of procedure. Democracy would gain, because there would be a better chance, a greater likelihood, of improving a Bill, because it would be more efficiently examined.
In the meantime, I support the Motion on the principle of being better late than never. However, I hope that the rules of the House will be changed to permit this procedure, though I fear that it will have to be our generation that sees that it is done.

5.42 p.m.

Mrs. Doris Fisher: Many hon. Members have spoken of the number of hours, the number of Amendments and the number of Clauses, but I relate the number of hours which the Committee has taken so far to the number of tenants involved. The time taken on the Bill so far is infinitesimal compared with the impact which the Bill will have on the lives of tenants.
The Minister and the Under-Secretary have both recognised the great gulf between the two sides of the Committee on this issue. The Minister himself has publicly said that the Bill is complex. If he finds it difficult to understand, it is extremely difficult for members of the Committee to understand, and that has naturally delayed proceedings.
When we were discussing the Clauses dealing with subsidies, it became apparent that detailed explanations of the financial implications were required. Hon. Members who are interested in housing matters know that the system of housing subsidies has been built up over many years. By this one Bill they are all to

be replaced by an entirely different system.
The financial implications for local authorities have had to be carefully studied. When we were discussing this subject and asking for explanations, the Minister needed a great deal of prompting by his advisers before he could explain these complexities. That, too, took time.
We have made several proposals to protect both local authority and private tenants. It is important clearly to understand the Bill's effect on council tenants, for it removes their protection from local authorities. In view of the Government's dictatorial method of steamrolling their proposals through the Committee, the Opposition have been forced to try to make sure that council tenants are safeguarded in other ways. Even so, it was proved in Committee that the public landlord should not be trusted with the same freedom as the private landlord. All these complexities have had to be hammered out, and that has prolonged discussion.
Many of the debates have resulted from the queries of Opposition Members. On at least two occasions the Under-Secretary has offered to duplicate documents in order to elucidate matters.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: As my hon. Friend will know, I have been a frequent spectator of the Committee's proceedings. I am strongly of the view that the Minister does not understand his own Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree?

Mrs. Fisher: We came to that conclusion quite early.
I was saying that on at least two occasions the Under-Secretary offered to produce documents in order to elucidate complex issues, and we have been grateful for that. But it has naturally meant that the Committee has sat even longer. The language of the Bill is intricate and requires careful reading. Even the Minister has often found it difficult to explain provisions, and occasionally he has retreated from earlier observations. That, too, has lengthened discussion.
The Opposition regard the Bill as fundamentally wrong. For the first time in the history of local authority housing, tenants are to be required to pay a profit


rent, so much so that local authority housing will cease to be social housing. Council tenants will have to pay a profit rent which will assist local authorities to reduce rates, or help the Government to reduce taxation. Therefore, we have opposed that part of the Bill.
But our complaint about the delay arises from the lack of clarity from the Minister. It is, therefore, remiss of the Government to introduce the Motion when they could have speeded the passage of the Bill by having the information at their fingertips and by drafting the Bill more concisely.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. W. Benyon: Only my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Sydney Chapman) and the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham) have attempted an analysis of the guillotine procedure, at any rate from the back benches.
I agree with the remarks of my hon. Friend, but I reject the thesis made in the early part of his speech by the hon. Member for Paddington, North. The events that have occurred in Committee Room 11 over the past months have been a charade, a charade that is understood by all hon. Members, but it is ignored almost entirely by those outside the House. Where it is not ignored, it is regarded with incredulity that we should conduct our operations in this way. This is not the time to discuss the niceties of parliamentary procedure. All Oppositions have indulged in this practice. Indeed, using the argument that for instance, it is wrong to pontificate about coal mining if one has not had experience of a coal face, as a new Member I am delighted to have had this experience. It would be an Irish compliment to say that, in a negative sense, I have learned a great deal.
The essential argument is whether enough time has been given to the discussion of the Bill. Under any possible assessment, the answer must be "Yes". We have heard an enormous amount of statistics today. We have been told that we have discussed the Bill for 200 hours and that the Clauses that remain are not, in many instances, vital. If the time has been misused by the Opposition, that is a matter for them. They have spoken

for hours when minutes would do. They have done so to an extent that would have won the grudging admiration of the best performers in the American Senate. The Opposition are fond of accusing us of not keeping our election promises. I could not follow the argument of the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) that in this instance we could be accused of breaking election promises. Even by the wildest stretch of the imagination, that is not so. No Measure was spelt out more carefully before the General Election—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—in such a detailed way. It was discussed during the campaign. It was contained in our election manifesto. No. voters in June, 1970, could have had any doubts whatever that if they voted for the Conservative Party they were voting for the Measure being put into law.

Mr. Molloy: Commissar.

Mr. Benyon: The Opposition are against the principles of the Bill; that is understood. In the same way we were opposed to the principle of the nationalisation of the steel industry. But here the opposition is tinged with sour grapes. Hon. Members opposite know that if they had been returned to power in June, 1970, they would have had to introduce a measure somewhat akin to this one.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) has listed no fewer than five different propositions about council house rents which we heard in Committee. So we can only speculate as to what form the Labour Party's legislation would have taken. But the Opposition know that housing in Britain is in a bad state. They know that we are paying the price for years of mismanagement.

Mr. Molloy: Years of Tory councils.

Mr. Benyon: They know that we are miles behind other Western industrial countries which have suffered far greater difficulties as a result of the war, and they know that it would have been necessary to introduce some sort of selective approach to the problem. Thus, like all involuntary defenders of the status quo, they resort to destruction and distortion, and this becomes increasingly hysterical as the public refuses to respond. Thus, we have had a number of sinister threats,


already referred to today, made by various members of the Committee, which will not be forgotten as time passes.
This is a Measure of major reform. Like all such Measures, from the abolition of slavery onwards, it has been opposed by reactionary elements in the country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Today from the Opposition Front Bench we have heard the argument that the Measure is inflationary. I suppose that it is inflationary if the poorer tenants and the tenants of private landlords are to get reductions in their rent. We have heard that it is a profit measure. It is a curious profit measure if ultimately the Government still continue to subsidise housing to the tune of £350 million.
The time has come to end these discussions. The debate has been very extensive both inside and outside the House. It is a great and long overdue reform which should be allowed to reach the Statute Book with the minimum of delay.

5.56 p.m.

Mr. John Fraser: Having served in Government I have some sympathy with the members of the Committee—a Committee that has continued for a long time. But why is the guillotine being introduced now? It is unnecessary to have it now. The Committee is not holding up proceedings in the House. Why do the Government want to railroad the Bill through now? The reason is that they have been rumbled, because although they regard the Bill as a fit subject for showcase presentation on television—perhaps even the subject of one of the new ministerial television interviews, in the absence of the Opposition—they do not find it convenient to have it examined on the Floor of the House, especially when it returns on Report.
In effect, we are given only two-and-a-half days, in which hon. Members will be armed with questions and will want to search carefully the Government's motives. They will have all kinds of questions from their constituencies and local authorities. They will not be able to examine the Bill properly. This will be a denial not only of the rights of the 37 members of the Committee but also of those of many hon. Members who wish to put forward proposals.
Let us face what we have to examine in the two-and-a-half days. The Government

propose to return with a very important statement on allowances to furnished tenants. There will be another debate on the definition of a furnished tenancy. We shall have to debate Government Amendments arising from dis-discussion. Although we have spent a long time discussing Clause 70, as far as I recall the Government already have to put down four Amendments to correct their misdrafting about rights of entry, about which Government back benchers were very unhappy. The Government have undertaken to look at that matter. A period of two-and-a-half days is probably enough only to examine Government Amendments which arise from the detailed criticism put forward.
When the Government presented this very complicated, lengthy and wide-ranging Bill they were faced with two enormous dangers. The first was that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister for Housing and Construction might not understand the Bill, the second, that everybody else might. Both fears were well-founded. The right hon. Gentleman has been bewildered by the creature of which he is in charge. For example—putting the lie to some of the stuff we have heard about long speeches—I moved an Amendment on Clause 3. I could read the speech I made; it comprises only eight lines in HANSARD. The right hon. Gentleman's reply was:
I confess to having been taken somewhat by surprise by the brevity of the hon. Gentleman's speech. I will seek advice on the point, and reply to him in due course."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 7th December, 1971; c. 253.]
That was a very short speech on an important, basic Clause. The right hon. Gentleman complained about it and did not even understand it. That was the first danger. The Minister did not understand it. As the Bill has progressed that fear has been confirmed. But the much more dangerous problem was that other people would begin to understand it. The lengthy proceedings in Committee and their repeated reporting in the Press have contributed to a wider understanding of the implications of the Bill. The public are becoming more and more aware of them.

Mr. Frank Marsden: I concede that some time has been wasted in Committee, but does my hon. Friend agree with me about one


of the reasons? In Committee we tried to get information from the Minister. We appealed to him over and over again for facts and figures. We even asked for a financial memorandum so that we could ascertain some of the facts. In fact, I have obtained more facts from the Liverpool town clerk. It was clear to me that local authorities were in possession of more facts than were members of the Committee. That is where the lime wasting went on—trying to get facts from the Minister.

Mr. Fraser: I accept that.
As I have said, as the proceedings on the Bill have continued, more and more people have understood its implications. If the proceedings in Committee had been terminated as some hon. Members opposite have proposed, the Government would not even have had time to put down Amendments to the part dealing with housing associations. At least the more criticism of the Bill that has been made by local authorities and professional bodies the more time has been made available for understanding the Bill. Had it not been for the lengthy proceedings in Committee many points would have been missed.
People are waking up not just to the Bill's implications but to its economic setting. The Prime Minister makes cosy speeches on television on Sunday evenings, but members of the public are wondering what is going on. They are wondering whether their rents will be doubled. They are thinking more and more about the Bill in the context of the Government's economic strategy. They see the Minister for Housing and Construction and the Under-Secretary of State as—and this is how I described them in Committee—Butch Amery and the Sundance Kid, with one motto—"Stick 'em up!": stick them all up on Clause 63, stick them up by 50p on Clause 64, stick them up by £1 on Clause 66 and stick them up by more than £1 on Clause 95 if a commissioner is put in. Butch Amery's sheriff—the commissioner—will go into the town halls to fulfil the functions of councillors who refuse to implement the Bill's provisions.
Tenants have cottoned on to the doubling of council rents by 1975–76 due to the efforts of my hon. Friend the

Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun), who received and circulated a Government document—and a good thing, too. The Minister has vehemently denied time and again that the figure in it is accurate. He has told the Committee, "I agree that it is an official document, but I assure you that it is officially inaccurate". We know from our researches that the document is accurate, and people are beginning to understand this. The longer the proceedings on the Bill take the deeper is the message sinking in.
Conservative authorities, in particular, are aware of the "great surplus robbery" whereby half the surpluses in local authority housing revenue accounts will be purloined—to use the Minister's word—by the Treasury. As I said the other day, it makes Jesse James look like a suburban shoplifter when one considers the amount of money that the Government will lift from local authority coffers. The tenants and the local authority in Gloucester who read the reports of this debate will say, "How is it that the hon. Lady the Member for Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim) is able to spend hours and hours in counting the number of points of order which have been made and the number of times on which it has been necessary to draw attention to the need for a quorum but has not calculated how much of Gloucester's surplus will be purloined, or, if she has calculated it, has not made a speech in Committee about it? This is curious".

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not add to the calumny of his hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Mr. Cohen), who was guilty of a terminological inexactitude when he accused me of being absent from the Committee for 80 per cent. of the time. If he has any evidence to substantiate that, I ask him to put it forward or to withdraw his remark. I hope that the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. John Fraser), to whom I was kind enough to pay a compliment which caused him great embarrassment among his colleagues, will not add to the calumny.

Mr. Fraser: I am not adding to calumny. I am simply saying that people will observe—and I am certainly entitled to observe—that the hon. Lady has gone to considerable trouble to make mathematical calculations about points of order, but she and her hon. Friends, particularly


those who represent surplus authority areas, have made no calculation, and certainly have made no speeches, concerning the resentment which many Conservative authorities feel about the purloining of their surpluses by the Minister.

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: I have had no indication from my Conservative authority that there is any resentment about this matter. I can speak only on behalf of my authority, which has made no such representations. Therefore, I cannot put it forward.

Mr. Fraser: What the hon. Lady is saying is that she sits absolutely dumb and silent and if the local authority does not prompt her about the surplus she will say nothing. I have had letters from many Tory local authorities, sayings, "How can we get rid of our surplus? May we plough it back into the general rate fund?" Bromley council is one of them. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh?"] I am sorry; I should have said that I have had letters from Labour councillors about Conservative authorities. Councils like Bromley are ploughing money from the housing revenue account into the general rate fund. There is a great deal of resentment about this.
The Government are afraid that the longer the proceedings on the Bill go on the more council committee meetings there will be at which consideration will be given to the question whether the authority can put the surplus in the general rate fund or spend it on improvements. Local authorities are waking up to the fact that the Minister proposes to interfere in the way in which they operate their housing revenue accounts in terms of and the amount of money that they spend on maintenance, repair and standards.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: Is my hon. Friend aware that the Southampton authority has just put a £300,000 surplus on the housing revenue account into the general rate fund? The council tenants of Southampton are subsidising the rest of the ratepayers.

Mr. Fraser: Exactly. The Government know that the earlier the Bill becomes law the more they can pinch from local authorities and the less they will be able to spend for the benefit of their ratepayers and tenants. This understanding

is creeping through in places like Newcastle and in local authorities where the Conservatives face defeat in the coming local elections. That is why we had in Committee the Newcastle Amendment, which is intended to save the face of the Tories.
The longer the proceedings on the Bill continue the deeper becomes the understanding and the resentment, and the more the message sinks in. The Government, acting like the social bandits they are, are saying to local authorities, to the people and to the House, just like any bandit, "Stop talking and stick 'em up"—and they mean not their hands but the rents. The real friends of the Tory Party are waiting for the pay-off.

6.9 p.m.

Mr. Reginald Freeson: This is not an honourable action which the Leader of the House and the Government have taken.
We have yet to deal with 33 Clauses and 12 new Clauses. I have not checked the number of Amendments yet to be discussed, but there is a considerable number of them, ranging up to 100, some of which are in the Government's name. The Clauses with which we have to deal relate to housing associations and the Housing Corporation as well as to other matters. The new Clauses deal with questions of investment in public authority housing—a matter not touched on in the White Paper or in the Bill as drafted. These are all important issues.
Even if it could be argued—and I do not accept that it could—that the length of time spent on 70 Clauses to date is excessive to the extent of 50 per cent., that could not possibly justify the limited time that is to be given to the rest of the Bill. Even if we were to accept as reasonable half the length of time spent on the Bill, that would not justify another two weeks or so in Committee, with 45 Clauses and well over 100 Amendments to be considered—all important matters—with only three days on the Floor of the House.
The Motion is dishonourable for a second reason. There are 630 hon. Members of the House, and to give only three days on Report for one of the most controversial local government Measures that the country has ever seen


is a disgrace, and the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House has not acted honourably in treating us in this way.
I do not accept the criticisms levelled at Opposition members of the Committee for the length of time spent on the Bill. I shall not be carried down the road of philosophising or discussing housing policy, as one or two hon. Members opposite have done, because that is more appropriate in Committee, and more appropriate to times which will come when the Bill will, unfortunately, have been passed by the House. That will be a matter to be dealt with on the Floor of the House and in Committee as appropriate in the future.
I certainly reject the garbled and ignorant views about the position of the Labour Party on housing matters. One thing is sure; we in the Labour Party do not wish to see a major cutback in public authority house building, which is the considered policy of the Government. I predict that within three years from now, if the policies of the Government are pursued as reflected in the Bill and in other Measures, there will not be many more than 100,000 local authority starts per year. That is not Labour policy: that is the policy of the Conservatives.
To return to the length of time that we are supposed to have wrongly spent on the Bill, I take as my starting point the Minister's remarks:
It has been borne in on me…that Members wish to discuss the Bill very thoroughly and I am sure that there is no wish on either side of the Committee that we should get ourselves involved in a guillotine. I therefore think that it would be right for us to give as much time as possible…
A little later he said:
It has become apparent that hon. Gentlemen opposite in particular have been anxious to express their views at length. Their views have proved interesting. Let no one suggest that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I were bored for one moment…Obviously, there is a desire to explore the Bill in depth. That being the case, and being unwilling myself to recommend the guillotine Motion, which seems to me something of a last resort, I thought it better to allow the Committee as much time as possible.
He further said:
We wish to ensure that the Bill is discussed in depth…The efforts of my hon. Friend and I are aimed at ensuring that the democratic rights of the House of Commons

are exercised through the Committee. There must be no pretext for saying that the Bill was not properly considered, or that it was guillotined. Let us discuss it sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 24th February, 1972; c. 2505–2509.]
The Minister said on the following Monday that those remarks related to a sittings Motion to establish sittings on five days in succession per week, which he himself, before it was implemented, accepted was wrong and withdrew. If it was right then that we should have, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, examination with a good length of time for debate, and if the Minister accepted that it would be wrong to sit for five days in succession per week it must be assumed that the debate should be conducted in some other way. That means that it should be done on a reasonable basis of three days per week. We have been sitting since then in the same spirit of examining the Bill sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph.

Mr. James Allason: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the previous all-time record for length of proceedings was established at column 3406 of the proceedings on the Transport Bill and that the proceedings on the Housing Finance Bill have now reached column 3700 at least?

Mr. Freeson: What I have been quoting was said on 24th February and it is now 13th March.
I consider that the guillotine Motion before us is another speedy change of mind by the Minister and the Government.

Mr. Raison: Mr. Raison rose—

Mr. Freeson: I am sorry, I cannot give way, my time is limited. I am looking forward to the Minister's rumbustious performance, which I expect to be entertaining and not elucidating. What I have said is a sufficient answer to the criticisms.
The Minister, speaking on behalf of himself and his colleagues, said that we should examine the Bill line by line, paragraph by paragraph, and sentence by sentence, and that is what we want to continue to do.

Mr. Raison: Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to deny flatly that the Opposition's tactics have been to bring about a guillotine Motion?

Mr. Freeson: The tactics on this side of the House are to discuss—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] If I am asked a question, at least let hon. Members opposite have the courtesy to listen to the reply. I give the answer in the words of the Minister—that it is our desire to examine the Bill sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, taking as much time as may be necessary to do so.
I now turn to the headings upon which we have been spending our time. The Bill has not received from the daily or weekly Press the publicity that one might have expected. This is a serious issue, which will affect many millions of people—not just council tenants but private tenants and owner-occupiers. The Bill will create a situation in which local authority rents will become the market leaders, which will drag up the market level for everybody and not just council tenants.
Have we been wrong to spend so much time on seeking information which the Minister had—and still has—difficulty in providing when we examine the Bill line by line and paragraph by paragraph? Was it wrong to spend a long time discussing the exclusion of nearly half a million furnished tenancies? Was it wrong to examine that point by point, line by line, for hours on end? Was it wrong to discuss the principles of rent levels, the rights of tenants, the rights of local authorities in relation to central Government and the interference by central Government to a degree which we have never seen before? All this is set down in the Bill, and every local authority organisation, of whatever party affiliation, has made this point.
Was it wrong to spend a long time discussing what has falsely been called the fair rents procedure in the Bill? We have argued these matters in detail in Committee for many hours, point by point, to show that the procedures in the private sector in no way compare with what will obtain in the public sector of housing.
Was it wrong to discuss issues relating to co-operative housing? Was it wrong to raise the issue of ex-owner-occupiers who were paid reduced prices for their houses so that they could be rehoused by local authorities at given rent levels on agreed terms? Was it wrong to discuss their rights—rights which will be taken away by the Bill? Was it wrong to discuss

the disposal of surpluses produced by local authorities through Government edict when those surpluses are to be taken over by central Government? Why is it not right that we should discuss this innovation in local government finance? It is not a question of only a few thousand pounds. It will involve millions and, in due course, hundreds of millions of pounds which will be taken from local government by central Government as a result of the provisions of the Bill. And this will be paid for by tenants.
Was it wrong to spend a long time discussing Clauses and Amendments which create a situation in which local authority tenants will provide the major part of a £350 million subsidy which will be taken by the Government for other purposes, and most of which will come from the pockets of tenants or out of the surpluses in local authority housing revenue accounts?
Of course, it was right for us to spend a long time discussing these matters; indeed, the Minister has said so. The Association of Municipal Corporations also takes this view, as do the Urban District Councils Association, the London Boroughs Association and a large number of elected local government members. They see the Bill as an interference in local government affairs. Indeed, local government elected members who attended the Conservative Party's local government conference a week or ten days ago could not get called by the management committee of the conference motions which were highly critical of the Bill.
These are the matters that we have spent a long time discussing in Committee. If the Government steamroller through such provisions they will do themselves no good. They will not be able to stem the rising tide of resentment across local government party boundaries, or the resentment that will emanate from local authority tenants as they learn about the full impact of these provisions, which will lead to their money being taken by the Government. Nor will the Government stem the tide of resentment that will rise in the private market sector as the Government's action is borne in on the public. That action will mean a considerable increase in the price of owner-occupied properties. As a result private tenants' rents will be pushed up right across the board.
Apart from the mess into which the Government have plunged themselves over their legislative programme, there is one main reason for seeking to impose this guillotine. The reason is that they have written into the Bill a timetable procedure which makes it essential for them to get the Bill through the House quickly. The date on which they have fixed is 1st October, and it is a date to which every local authority association has objected. Indeed the A.M.C., which represents the major group of authorities, has objected very strongly indeed. It is this rigidity and inflexibility of approach which has led to the commitment to 1st October when the first increases of £1 will be felt throughout the country, and it is this to which local authorities of all political persuasions have objected. That is why we now have this guillotine Motion before the House.
Those are my reasons for rejecting the Government's arguments for a guillotine. In order that we may at least have a reasonable time to debate these matters on the Floor when the Bill comes back for its Report stage, I beg to move the Amendment in line 7, leave out "three" and insert "six".

6.25 p.m.

The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. Julian Amery): At the outset I wish to pay tribute to the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party did not serve on the Committee, but towards the end of the last century it introduced the guillotine procedure to the House of Commons. Whatever has been said in this debate. I feel that there are few hon. Members who are not grateful to the Liberals for that invention.
The hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) and his right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) said that the guillotine was not justified. The right hon. Gentleman opened the proceedings upstairs by saying that he did not propose to filibuster. He said in the House this afternoon that he is content to seek to change and to amend and that he has no wish to table proliferating Amendments. In other words, his attitude is that the Opposition would be reasonable and co-operative and that they would neither filibuster nor obstruct but would help the Government to get an improved version of the Bill. I hope

my hon. Friends will take note of the right hon. Gentleman's words.
However, in the Press over the weekend we read all about hon. Members opposite stumping the country saying the Bill was iniquitous, that they will tight its provisions inch by inch and obstruct them in every way open to them. Let them make their position clear. If the right hon. Gentleman is trying to help and co-operate, I hope he will tell the tenants' associations what he is doing. I hope he will tell them that he and the Opposition are seeking to improve the Bill and get Government business through. He must tell them that there is no question of obstruction or of fighting the Bill inch by inch and line by line, but that there will simply be a process of co-operation in the way a constitutional Opposition should work.
The right hon. Gentleman knows that had we continued to leave housing finance as it stands today, by the middle of the decade the bill would have risen from £350 million to £600 million. He knows that if his right hon. Friend the former Chancellor of the Exchequer had still been at No. 11 Downing Street, this would not have been acceptable to him. He also knows that if his right hon. Friend, with whom I understand the right hon. Gentleman is in close contact, were ever to be at No. 10 Downing Street, for which he seems to be trying to book a ticket, such an escalation in subsidies would not be acceptable.
We have often discussed the criteria by which rents should be determined. The choice is fairly limited. We could have had the fair rents inaugurated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman). We could have had pooled historic costs. One or two other suggestions have been made, but all involve increased rents. There could be arguments about the speed of progression towards the increases, but the slower the increase the slower the ability to distribute other benefits in terms of rebates and allowances.
I would, of course, be misleading the House if I pretended that the right hon. Gentleman was a convert in any wholehearted sense to fair rents, but he certainly explicitly accepted the need for the reform of housing finance. He said so on one occasion, and welcomed our proposals to extend rebates to all local


authorities and allowances to the private sector, and to expand the slum clearance subsidies.
In the earlier stages of our discussions in the Committee the right hon. Gentleman's influence was paramount. He was heeded as though he were a prophet come down from the mountains. I am not surprised: many of his hon. Friends were serving in the House for the first time, or nearly the first time. They had limited experience of Committee work—as, indeed, the right hon. Gentleman and I have. They took their cue from him, and as a result at the beginning we made very good progress, passing 48 Clauses and five Schedules, many of them highly contentious, in 66 hours. Then the pace began to slow up. The next 14 Clauses took 50 hours. After that we needed 79½ hours to get through 7½Clauses.
Nor could anyone argue that the time spent bore any relationship to the controversial character of the Clauses concerned. Clause 68, which deals with the refund of rent above the fair rent—something clearly favourable to the tenant—took nine hours 13 minutes. Clause 70, the purpose of which is to prevent one possible device for evading the duties imposed on local authorities by Part VI, has so far taken 12 hours 49 minutes—

Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann: Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann (Kensington, North) rose—

Mr. Amery: No. In the first place, my time, too, is limited. Further, having made a study of the facts, I have no evidence that at any stage the executioner with the original guillotine ever allowed the victim, once laid upon the block, to intervene. This, indeed, unfair as it may seem, was the evidence we had from Dr. Guillotin himself, who, I believe, invented the machine—

Mr. Molloy: Mr. Molloy rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. It seems that the right hon. Gentleman does not intend to give way, so the hon. Gentleman must resume his seat.

Mr. Amery: I would at once acquit the right hon. Gentleman of any desire—[Interruption.]—to go back on his undertaking at the first sitting not to filibuster in any way—[Interruption.]—

and if he had wanted to obstruct from the start—[Interruption.]—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) must play fair by the House. If the right hon. Gentleman the Minister does not give way, the hon. Gentleman must not try to get in by interjection from a sedentary position.

Mr. Molloy: May I raise a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman may raise with me a point of order with which I am competent to deal, but I know the hon. Member too well to think that he would seek to get over what he wanted to say by way of a point of order.

Mr. Molloy: The right hon. Gentleman correctly and quite properly referred to the origins of the guillotine, but he seemed to give the impression that they were humorous origins. In point of fact, it was to do with the origins of the Irish question, and we know what happens about that question today.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I know nothing about any Irish question today.

Mr. Amery: The Scots had a similar machine which was known, I believe, as the Maiden.
As I was saying, I would at this stage acquit the right hon. Gentleman of any desire to go back on his undertaking not to filibuster. Had he wanted to filibuster or obstruct the Bill, and I do not think he ever had that wish, he could have spent much more time on Part II—rent rebates and rent allowances—and much more time on Part IV—controlled and regulated tenancies.
But, while the right hon. Gentleman's contribution at an early stage revealed a constructive approach, some of his hon. Friends sang rather a different tune. At our very first sitting, the hon. Members for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy) said of the Bill "Kill it." They sang this in antiphonal response which would have appealed to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
A little later on the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) declared:
I am trying to stop this Measure from becoming law".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 8th February, 1972; c. 1379.]


At our fortieth sitting the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Eddie Griffiths) said:
I joined the Committee to do everything I possibly could to obstruct it. I shall continue to do so. I have…a vested interest in the destruction of the Bill…I have to see to it that the timetable is not kept."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 6th March, 1972; c. 3349–50.]
As our debates advanced it became increasingly clear to me that there was a deep split between what I might call the "officials" and the "provisionals". This was clearly illustrated by the debate on Amendment No. 269, a debate which lasted for 7¼ hours. That Amendment proposed that each local authority should be required to charge what it regarded as a reasonable rent provided it did not exceed pooled historic costs. That would have had the effect of placing a very low ceiling on the rents of some authorities and a high ceiling on others. The right hon. Gentleman said that the alternative policy:
leaves entirely open what should be the proper level of Government subsidies.
The hon. Member for Gateshead, West (Mr. Horam) wanted a general subsidy. He said:
We would operate it as a general subsidy related not to the individual tenant but to the local authorities to keep down the level of rents.
The hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. McBride), a good Scottish Welshman with his customary directness put the point very succinctly when he said:
The Amendment supports the retention of a system which has worked well for 50 years."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E. 8th February, 1972; c. 1367–93.]
No wonder that on 9th March New Society wrote:
So complex a Measure was bound to take time. But it is not the intricate new subsidy arrangements, the assistance scales or the phasing-in of change, by and large, that have taken up the time. Much has gone on which looks suspiciously like obstruction. The Labour group, for example, has had a quite unacceptable Amendment ready for virtually every single Clause in the Bill.
The constitution of the Labour Party is very curious. The right hon. Gentleman is responsible on the Opposition Front Bench for housing and, indeed, for the entire range of environment. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Salford, East speaks on the National Executive

for these matters. The right hon. Gentleman supports rebates and allowances; the hon. Gentleman thinks that allowances are subsidies to landlords. Far out on the left—on my right at the moment—is the hon. Member for Bolsover, who regards even rebates for council tenants as a "skeleton in the cupboard."
The hon. Member for Bolsover was good enough in an earlier debate to refer to me as an arrogant pig. I hope that the House will not accept the description, but, if it does, I can only say that the hon. Gentleman's own bearing proves the truth of the old saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
It became clear in the Committee that the power was passing from the right hon. Gentleman to his hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East, to whom I have referred as receiving a document improperly communicated to him. Incidentally I said on that point, on which the hon. Gentleman dwelt at very great length, that the Newcastle rents disproved what he said. I am glad to be able to say, and I shall have an opportunity to expand on the matter before long, that I have now had several more authorities reporting this situation, so that I can say that he was guilty in this instance of scaremongering.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Did or did not the right hon. Gentleman say in an interview yesterday that local authorities for the first time would make a profit out of their tenants?

Mr. Amery: Be that as it may—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—when I come to develop the evidence that I am accumulating, I shall be able to show that the hon. Gentleman's charge about doubling and more than doubling the rents was totally false and that all the evidence—

Mr. John Mendelson: Answer.

Mr. Amery: All the evidence now accumulating confirms my view that the hon. Member for Salford, East was guilty of scaremongering.
When I say that the party opposite could not agree on anything except the false premise that we were doubling the rents, I tried to help. I offered the right


hon. Member for Grimsby and his colleagues to sit five days a week. I thought that that might give them time—

Mr. Leonard: The right hon. Gentleman forgot to tell his Chief Whip.

Mr. Amery: I thought that it might give the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite time to reconcile their differences. I thought that it would give them time to see whether they could concert a policy which would be either an alternative one to our own or a constructive criticism of it. As the right hon. Gentleman underlined, it was an unprecedented offer. It was a very generous offer. It involved important sacrifices for my hon. Friends. It was rejected out of hand. I do not know why. Perhaps the right hon. Member for Grimsby was too bored. Perhaps he thought he could not hope to carry his hon. Friends with him. He said that I was proposing to incarcerate hon. Members in the Committee. I dare say he had seen enough of his fellow prisoners on his own side of the Committee to treat my suggestion seriously.
It is quite clear that all that the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends are trying to do is postpone the introduction of the present Measure or to cause it to be withdrawn. What is it that they seek to have postponed or withdrawn? It is a Measure which by giving help where it is needed will bring fairness into rents as between the tenants of one authority and another, between council tenants and private tenants, and between tenants, tax payers and rate payers. It is a Measure which will enable authorities in stress areas to build houses without the prospect of placing intolerable burdens on ratepayers. It is a Measure which will provide for the first time a specific subsidy for slum clearance. We have

never had one. It is a Measure which will arrest the drift into slumdom of privately rented houses. It is a Measure which makes every council tenant who needs it eligible to receive help by way of rebate. It is a Measure which for the first time gives rent allowances to private tenants.

Over 198 hours of discussion the Opposition have failed to talk themselves into a policy. They have succeeded in talking the Government into a guillotine. Even this could permit a further 70 hours or more of discussion if the Opposition wished. I think that they should be thankful for these mercies.

6.43 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Swain: I hate to intervene in a debate at this late hour. But this guillotine is a vicious Motion curtailing discussion on a vicious Bill. I ask the Government even now—

Mr. John Gorst: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Swain: No.

Mr. Gorst: Mr. Gorst rose—

Hon. Members: Hon. Members Give way.

Mr. Swain: Even now I ask the Government to withdraw the guillotine Motion—

It being three hours after the commencement of the proceedings on the Motion, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER, proceeded to put the Questions necessary to dispose of them, pursuant to Standing Order No. 44 (Allocation of time to Bills).

Question put accordingly, That the Amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 274, Noes 310.

Division No. 80.]
AYES
[6.45 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Beaney, Alan
Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)


Albu, Austen
Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Buchan, Norman


Allaun, Frank (Salford E.)
Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)


Allen, Scholefield
Bidwell, Sydney
Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Bishop, E. S.
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James


Armstrong, Ernest
Blenkinsop, Arthur
Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)


Ashley, Jack
Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Cant, R. B.


Ashton, Joe
Booth, Albert
Carmichael, Neil


Atkinson, Norman
Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)


Barnes, Michael
Bradley, Tom
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Broughton, Sir Alfred
Clark, David (Colne Valley)


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)


Baxter, William
Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Cohen, Stanley




Coleman, Donald
Hunter, Adam
Orme, Stanley


Concannon, J. D.
Irvine,Rt.Hn.SirArthur(Edge Hill)
Oswald, Thomas


Conlan, Bernard
Janner, Greville
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Padley, Walter


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Paget, R. T.


Crawshaw, Richard
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Palmer, Arthur


Cronin, John
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
John, Brynmor
Parker, John (Dagenham)


Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Cunningham, G. (Islington, S.W.)
Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Pendry, Tom


Dalyell, Tam
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Pentland, Norman


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Perry, Ernest G.


Davidson, Arthur
Jones,Rt.Hn.Sir Elwyn(W.Ham,S.)
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Prescott, John


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Judd, Frank
Price, William (Rugby)


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Kaufman, Gerald
Probert, Arthur


Deakins, Eric
Kelley, Richard
Rankin, John


Delargy, Hugh
Kerr, Russell
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund
Kinnock, Neil
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Dempsey, James
Lambie, David
Richard, Ivor


Doig, Peter
Lamond, James
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Dormand, J. D.
Latham, Arthur
Roberts,Rt.Hn.Goronwy(Caernarvon)


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Lawson, George
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br'c'n&amp;R'dnor)


Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Leadbitter, Ted
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Driberg, Tom
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Roper, John


Duffy, A. E. P.
Leonard, Dick
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Dunnett, Jack
Lestor, Miss Joan
Sandelson, Neville


Eadie, Alex
Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Edelman, Maurice
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Short, Rt.Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Lipton, Marcus
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton,N.E.)


Ellis, Tom
Lomas, Kenneth
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


English, Michael
Loughlin, Charles
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Evans, Fred
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Sillars, James


Ewing, Henry
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Silverman, Julius


Faulds, Andrew
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Skinner, Dennis


Fisher, Mrs. Doris(B'ham, Ladywood)
McBride, Neil
Small, William


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
McCann, John
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)


Fitt, Gerard (Belfast, W.)
McCartney, Hugh
Spearing, Nigel


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
McElhone, Frank
Spriggs, Leslie


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
McGuire, Michael
Stallard, A. W.


Foley, Maurice
Mackenzie, Gregor
Steel, David


Foot, Michael
Mackie, John
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)


Ford, Ben
Mackintosh, John P.
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Forrester, John
Maclennan, Robert
Strang, Gavin


Fraser, John (Norwood)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.


Freeson, Reginald
McNamara, J. Kevin
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Galpern, Sir Myer
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Swain, Thomas


Garrett, W. E.
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Taverne, Dick


Gilbert, Dr. John
Marks, Kenneth
Thomas,Rt.Hn.George (Cardiff,W.)


Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Marquand, David
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Golding, John
Marsden, F.
Tinn, James


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Tomney, Frank


Gourlay, Harry
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Torney, Tom


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Mayhew, Christopher
Tuck, Raphael


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Meacher, Michael
Varley, Eric G.


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Wainwright, Edwin


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)


Grimond, Rt. Hn J.
Mendelson, John
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Millan, Bruce
Wallace, George


Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Miller, Dr. M. S.
Watkins, David


Hamling, William
Milne, Edward
Weitzman, David


Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)
Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)
Wellbeloved, James


Hardy, Peter
Molloy, William
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Hattersley, Roy
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Whitehead, Phillip


Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Whitlock, William


Heffer, Eric S.
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Hilton, W. S.
Moyle, Roland
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Hooson, Emlyn
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Horam, John
Murray, Ronald King
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Oakes, Gordon
Wilson, William (Coventry S.)


Huckfield, Leslie
Ogden, Eric
Woof, Robert


Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
O'Halloran, Michael



Hughes, Mark (Durham)
O'Malley, Brian
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Oram, Bert
Mr. James A. Dunn and


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Orbach, Maurice
Mr. Joseph Harper.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
Atkins, Humphrey


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Astor, John
Balniel, Lord







Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Galbraith, Hn. T. G
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)


Batsford, Brian
Gardner, Edward
McNair-Wilson, Michael


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Gibson-Watt, David
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)


Bell, Ronald
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Maddan, Martin


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E)
Madel, David


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Glyn, Dr. Alan
Maginnis, John E.


Benyon, W.
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Marten, Neil


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Goodhart, Phillip
Mather, Carol


Biffen, John
Goodhew, Victor
Maude, Angus


Biggs-Davison, John
Gorst, John
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald


Blaker, Peter
Gower, Raymond
Mawby, Ray


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Body, Richard
Gray, Hamish
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Boscawen, Robert
Green, Alan
Mills, Peter (Torrington)


Bossom, Sir Clive
Grieve, Percy
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)


Bowden, Andrew
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Miscampbell, Norman


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Grylls, Micha[...]
Mitchell, Lt.-Col.C.(Aberdeenshire,W)


Braine, Bernard
Gummer, Selwyn
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)


Bray, Ronald
Gurden, Harold



Brewis, John
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Moate, Roger


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Molyneaux, James


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Money, Ernle


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Monks, Mrs. Connie


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Monro, Hector


Bryan, Paul
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Montgomery, Fergus


Buchanan-Smith, Alick(Angus,N&amp;M)
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
More, Jasper


Buck, Antony
Haselhurst, Alan
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)


Bullus, Sir Eric
Hastings, Stephen
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.


Burden, F. A.
Havers, Michael
Morrison, Charles


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Hawkins, Paul
Mudd, David


Campbell, Rt.Hn.G.(Moray&amp;Nairn)
Hay, John
Murton, Oscar


Carlisle, Mark
Hayhoe, Barney
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward
Neave, Airey


Cary, Sir Robert
Heseltine, Michael
Nicholls, Sir Harmar


Channon, Paul
Hicks, Robert
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Chapman, Sydney
Higgins, Terence L.
Normanton, Tom


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Hiley, Joseph
Onslow, Cranley


Chichester-Clark, R.
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Churchill, W. S.
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Holland, Phillip
Osborn, John


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Holt, Miss Mary
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Clegg, Walter
Hordern, Peter
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Cockeram, Eric
Hornby, Richard
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Cooke, Robert
Hornsby-Smith,Rt.Hn.Dame Patricia
Parkinson, Cecil


Coombs, Derek
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Peel, John


Cooper, A. E.
Howell, David (Guildford)
Percival, Ian


Cordle, John
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Peyton, Rt. Hn. John


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Hunt, John
Pink, R. Bonner


Cormack, Patrick
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Pounder, Rafton


Costain, A. P.
James, David
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Critchley, Julian
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Crouch, David
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Crowder, F. P.
Jessel, Toby
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Curran, Charles
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Pym, Rt. Hon. Francis


Davies, Rt. Kn. John (Knutsford)
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Quennell, Miss J. M.


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Jopling, Michael
Raison, Timothy


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid,Maj.-Gen.James
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Dean, Paul
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Redmond, Robert


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Kershaw, Anthony
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Dixon, Piers
Kilfedder, Jamas
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Kimball, Marcus
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Douglas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Dykes, Hugh
Kinsey, J. R.
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Eden, Sir John
Kitson, Timothy
Ridsdale, Julian


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Elliot, Capt, Walter (Carshalton)
Knox, David
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)
Lambton, Lord
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Emery, Peter
Lane, David
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)


Farr, John
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Fell, Anthony
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Rost, Peter


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Le Marchant, Spencer
Royle, Anthony


Fidler, Michael
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Russell, Sir Ronald


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Longden, Gilbert
Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Loveridge, John
Scott, Nicholas


Fookes, Miss Janet
Luce, R. N.
Scott-Hopkins, James


Fortescue, Tim
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Sharples, Richard


Foster, Sir John
MacArthur, Ian
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Fowler, Norman
McCrindle, R. A.
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Fox, Marcus
McLaren, Martin
Simeons, Charles


Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford &amp; Stone)
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Sinclair, Sir George


Fry, Peter
McMaster, Stanley
Skeet, T. H. H.







Smith, Dudley (W'wick &amp; L'mington)
Tebbit, Norman
Ward, Dame Irene


Soref, Harold
Temple, John M.
Warren, Kenneth


Speed, Keith
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Spence, John
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Sproat Iain
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Stainton, Keith
Tilney, John
Wiggin, Jerry


Stanbrook, Ivor
Trafford, Dr. Anthony
Wilkinson, John


Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)
Trew, Peter
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)
Tugendhat, Christopher
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Stokes, John
van Straubenzee, W. R.
Woodnutt, Mark


Stuttaford, Dr. Tom
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard
Worsley, Marcus


Sutcliffe, John
Waddington, David
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Tapsell, Peter
Walder, David (Clitheroe)
Younger, Hn. George


Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)



Taylor,Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Wall, Patrick
Mr. Reginald Eyre and


Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)
Walters, Dennis
Mr Bernard Weatherill


Question accordingly negatived


Main Question put:—


The House divided: Ayes 311, Noes 278.

Division No. 81.]
AYES
[6.55 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Cordle, John
Gurden, Harold


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Cormack, Patrick
Hall, John (Wycombe)


Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
Costain, A. P.
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Critchley, Julian
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)


Astor, John
Crouch, David
Hannam, John (Exeter)


Atkins, Humphrey
Crowder, F. P.
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Curran, Charles
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)


Balniel, Lord
Davies, Rt. Hn.John (Knutsford)
Haselhurst, Alan


Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hastings, Stephen


Batsford, Brian
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid.Maj.-Gen. James
Havers, Michael


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Dean, Paul
Hawkins, Paul


Bell, Ronald
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Hay, John


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Digby, Simon Wingfield
Hayhoe, Barney


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Dixon, Piers
Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward


Benyon, W.
Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Heseltine, Michael


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Douglas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec
Hicks, Robert


Biffen, John
du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Higgins, Terence L


Biggs-Davison, John
Dykes, Hugh
Hiley, Joseph


Blaker, Peter
Eden, Sir John
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)


Body, Richard
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Holland, Philip


Boscawen, Robert
Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne.N.)
Holt, Miss Mary


Bossom, Sir Clive
Emery, Peter
Hordern, Peter


Bowden, Andrew
Farr, John
Hornby, Richard


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Fell, Anthony
Hornsby-Smith,Rt.Hn.Dame Patricia


Braine, Sir Bernard
Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)


Bray, Ronald
Fidler, Michael
Howell, David (Guildford)


Brewis, John
Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Hunt, John


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Hutchison, Michael Clark


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Fookes, Miss Janet
James, David


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Fortescue, Tim
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)


Bryan, Paul
Foster, Sir John
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)


Buchanan-Smith, Alick(Angus,N&amp;M)
Fowler, Norman
Jessel, Toby


Buck, Antony
Fox, Marcus
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)


Bullus, Sir Eric
Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford &amp; Stone)
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)


Burden, F. A.
Fry, Peter
Jopling, Michael


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Galbraith, Hn. T. G
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith



Gardner, Edward
Kaberry, Sir Donald


Campbell, Rt.Hn.G.(Moray&amp;Nairn)
Gibson-Watt, David
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine


Carlisle, Mark
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Kershaw, Anthony


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Kilfedder, James


Cary, Sir Robert
Glyn, Dr. Alan
Kimball, Marcus


Channon, Paul
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B



Chapman, Sydney
Goodhart, Philip
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Goodhew, Victor
King, Tom (Bridgwater)


Chichester-Clark, R.
Gorst, John
Kinsey, J. R.


Churchill, W. S.
Gower, Raymond
Kitson, Timothy


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Knight, Mrs. Jill


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Gray, Hamish
Knox, David


Clegg, Walter
Green, Alan
Lambton, Lord


Cockeram, Eric
Grieve, Percy
Lane, David


Cooke, Robert
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Coombs, Derek
Grylls, Michael
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Cooper, A. E.
Gummer, J. Selwyn
Le Marchant, Spencer







Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Stanbrook, Ivor


Lloyd, Iain (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
Page, Graham (Crosby)
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Longden, Sir Gilbert
Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Loveridge, John
Parkinson, Cecil
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Luce, R. N.
Peel, John
Stokes, John


McAdden, Sir Stephen
Percival, Ian
Stuttaford, Dr. Tom


MacArthur, Ian
Peyton, Rt. Hn. John
Sutcliffe, John


McCrindle, R. A.
Pink, R. Bonner
Tapsell, Peter


McLaren, Martin
Pounder, Rafton
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Taylor,Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)


McMaster, Stanley
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Macmillan,Rt.Hn.Maurice (Farnham)
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)


McNair-Wilson, Michael
Proudfoot, Wilfred
Tebbit, Norman


McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Temple, John M.


Maddan, Martin
Quennell, Miss J. M.
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret


Madel, David
Raison, Timothy
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)


Maginnis, John E.
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Marten, Neil
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Peter



Mather, Carol
Redmond, Robert
Tilney, John


Maude, Angus
Reed, Lauranc (Bolton, E.)
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Rees, Peter (Dover)
Trew, Peter


Mawby, Ray
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Tugendhat, Christopher


Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Ridsdale, Julian
Waddington, David


Miscampbell, Norman
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Mitchell,Lt.-Col.C.(Aberdeenshire,W)
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)


Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Moate, Roger
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Wall, Patrick


Molyneaux, James
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)
Walters, Dennis


Money, Ernle
Rost, Peter
Ward, Dame Irene


Monks, Mrs. Connie
Royle, Anthony
Warren, Kenneth


Monro, Hector
Russell, Sir Ronald
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Montgomery, Fergus
St. John-Stevas, Norman
White, Roger (Gravesend)


More, Jasper
Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Scott, Nicholas
Wiggin, Jerry


Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Scott-Hopkins, James
Wilkinson, John


Morrison, Charles
Sharples, Richard
Winterton, Nicholas


Mudd, David
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Murton, Oscar
Shelton, William (Clapham)
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Nabarro, Sir Gerald
Simeons, Charles
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Neave, Airey
Sinclair, Sir George
Woodnutt, Mark


Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Sket, T. H. H.
Worsley, Marcus


Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Smith, Dudley (W'wick &amp; L'mington)
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Normanton, Tom
Soref, Harold
Younger, Hn. George


Onslow, Cranley
Speed, Keith



Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Spence, John
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Sproat, Iain
Mr. Reginald Eyre and


Osborn, John
Stainton, Keith
Mr. Bernard Weatherill.




NOES


Abse, Leo
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Dempsey, James


Albu, Austen
Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Doig, Peter


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Cant, R. B.
Dormand, J. D.


Allen, Scholefield
Carmichael, Neil
Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Douglas-Mann, Bruce


Ashley, Jack
Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Driberg, Tom


Ashton, Joe
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Duffy, A. E. P.


Atkinson, Norman
Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Dunn, James A.


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Dunnett, Jack


Barnes, Michael
Cohen, Stanley
Eadie, Alex


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Coleman, Donald
Edelman, Maurice


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Concannon, J. D.
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)


Baxter, William
Conlan, Bernard
Edwards, William (Merioneth)


Beaney, Alan
Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Ellis, Tom


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
English, Michael


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Crawshaw, Richard
Evans, Fred


Bidwell, Sydney
Cronin, John
Ewing, Harry


Bishop, E. S.
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Faulds, Andrew


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Fisher,Mrs. Doris(B'ham,Ladywood)


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Cunningham, G. (Islington, S.W.)
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)


Booth, Albert
Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Fitt, Gerard (Belfast, W.)


Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Dalyell, Tam
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)


Bradley, Tom
Davidson, Arthur
Foley, Maurice


Broughton, Sir Alfred
Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Foot, Michael


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,W.)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Ford, Ben


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Forrester, John


Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Fraser, John (Norwood)


Buchan, Norman
Deakins, Eric
Freeson, Reginald


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Delargy, H. J.
Galpern, Sir Myer


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund
Garrett, W. E.







Gilbert, Dr. John
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Golding, John
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Richard, Ivor


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
McBride, Neil
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Gourlay, Harry
McCann, John
Roberts,Rt.Hn.Goronwy(Caernarvon)


Grant, George (Morpeth)
McCartney, Hugh
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br'c'n&amp;R'dnor)


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
McElhone, Frank
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
McGuire, Michael
Roper, John


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Mackenzie, Gregor
Rose, Paul B.


Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Mackie, John
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Mackintosh, John P.
Sandelson, Neville


Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Maclennan, Robert
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Hamling, William
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)
McNamara, J. Kevin
Short, Rt.Hn.Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Hardy, Peter
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N.E.)


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Hattersley, Roy
Marks, Kenneth
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Marquand, David
Sillars, James


Heffer, Eric S.
Marsden, F.
Silverman, Julius


Hilton, W. S.
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Skinner, Dennis


Hooson, Emlyn
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Small, William


Horam, John
Mayhew, Christopher
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Meacher, Michael
Spearing, Nigel


Huckfield, Leslie
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Spriggs, Leslie



Mendelson, John
Stallard, A. W.


Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Millan, Bruce
Steel, David


Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Miller, Dr. M. S.
Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Milne, Edward
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)



Hunter, Adam
Molloy, William
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Irvine, Rt. Hn. Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Strang, Gavin


Janner, Greville
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.


Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Swain, Thomas


Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Moyle, Roland
Taverne, Dick


Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Thomas,Rt.Hn.George (Cardiff,W.)


John, Brynmor
Murray, Ronald King
Thomson. Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Oakes, Gordon
Tinn, James


Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Ogden, Eric
Tomney, Frank


Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
O'Halloran, Michael
Torney, Tom


Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
O'Malley, Brian
Tuck, Raphael


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Oram, Bert
Varley, Eric G.


Jones,Rt.Hn.Sir Elwyn(W.Ham,S.)
Orbach, Maurice
Wainwright, Edwin


Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Orme, Stanley
Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)


Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Oswald, Thomas
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Judd, Frank
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)
Wallace, George


Kaufman, Gerald
Padley, Walter
Watkins, David


Kelley, Richard
Paget, R. T.
Weitzman, David


Kerr, Russell
Palmer, Arthur
Wellbeloved, James


Kinnock, Neil
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Lambie, David
Pardoe, John
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Lamond, James
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Whitehead, Phillip


Latham, Arthur
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Whitlock, William


Lawson, George
Pavitt, Laurie
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Leadbitter, Ted
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Pendry, Tom
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Leonard, Dick
Pentland, Norman
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Lestor, Miss Joan
Perry, Ernest G.
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold
Prentice. Rt. Hn. Reg.
Woof, Robert


Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Prescott, John



Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)



Lipton, Marcus
Price, William (Rugby)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Lomas, Kenneth
Probert, Arthur
Mr. Joseph Harper and


Loughlin, Charles
Rankin, John
Mr. Ernest Armstrong.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ordered,
That the following provisions shall apply to the remaining Proceedings on the Bill:—

Committee

1. The Standing Committee to which the Bill is allocated shall report the Bill to the House on or before the 29th day of March.

Report and Third Reading

2.—(1) The Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading of the Bill shall be completed

in three allotted days and shall be brought to a conclusion at Eleven o'clock on the last of those days; and for the purposes of Standing Order No. 43 (Business Committee) this Order shall be taken to allot to the Proceedings on Consideration such part of those days as the Resolution of the Business Committee may determine.

(2) The Business Committee shall report to the House their resolutions as to the Proceedings on Consideration of the Bill, and as to the allocation of time between those Proceedings and Proceedings on Third Reading, not later than the fourth day on which the House sits after the day on which the Chairman of the Standing Committee reports the Bill to the House.

(3) The resolutions in any report made under Standing Order No. 43 (Business Committee) may be varied by a further report so made, whether or not within the time specified in sub-paragraph (2) of this paragraph, and whether or not the resolutions have been agreed to by the House.

Procedure in Standing Committee

3.—(1) At a Sitting of the Standing Committee at which any Proceedings on the Bill are to be brought to a conclusion under a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee the Chairman shall not adjourn the Committee under any Order relating to the sittings of the Committee until the Proceedings have been brought to a conclusion.

(2) No Motion shall be made in the Standing Committee relating to the sitting of the Committee except by a Member of the Government, and the Chairman shall permit a brief explanatory statement from the Member who makes, and from a Member who opposes the Motion, and shall then put the Question thereon.

4. No Motion shall be made to postpone any Clause, Schedule, new Clause or new Schedule, but the resolutions of the Business Sub-Committee may include alterations in the order in which Clauses, Schedules, new Clauses and new Schedules are to be taken in the Standing Committee.

Conclusion of Proceedings in Committee

5. On the conclusion of the Proceedings in any Committee on the Bill the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any Question.

Dilatory motions

6. No dilatory Motion with respect to, or in the course of, Proceedings on the Bill shall be made in the Standing Committee or on an allotted day except by a Member of the Government, and the Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.

Extra time on allotted days

7.—(1) On an allotted day paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted business) shall apply to the Proceedings on the Bill for one hour after Ten o'clock.

(2) Any period during which Proceedings on the Bill may be proceeded with after Ten o'clock under paragraph (7) of Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration) shall be in addition to the period under this paragraph.

Standing Order No. 13

8. Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of select committees at commencement of public business) shall not apply on an allotted day.

Private business

9. Any private business which has been set down for consideration at Seven o'clock on an allotted day shall, instead of being considered as provided by the Standing Orders, be considered at the conclusion of the Proceedings

on the Bill on that day, and paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted Business) shall apply to the private business for a period of three hours from the conclusion of the Proceedings on the Bill or, if those Proceedings are concluded before Ten o'clock, for a period equal to the time elapsing between Seven o'clock and the completion of those Proceedings.

Conclusion of Proceedings

10.—(1) For the purpose of bringing to a conclusion any Proceedings which are to be brought to a conclusion at a time appointed by this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee or the Business Sub-Committee and which have not previously been brought to a conclusion, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall forthwith proceed to put the following Questions (but no others), that is to say—

(a) the Question or Questions already pro posed from the Chair, or necessary to bring to a decision a Question so proposed (including, in the case of a new Clause or new Schedule which has been read a second time, the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill);
(b) the Question on any amendment or Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of any Member, if that amendment or Motion is moved by a Member of the Government;
(c) any other Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded;

and on a Motion so moved for a new Clause or a new Schedule, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall put only the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.

(2) Proceedings under sub-paragraph (1) of this paragraph shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.

(3) If, at Seven o'clock on an allotted day, any Proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion at or before that time have not been concluded, any Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration) which, apart from this Order, would stand over to that time shall stand over until those Proceedings have been concluded.

(4) If, on an allotted day, a Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 stands over to Seven o'clock on an allotted day, or to any later time under sub-paragraph (3) above, the bringing to a conclusion of any Proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion on that day at any hour falling after the beginning of the Proceedings on that Motion shall be postponed for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on that Motion.

Supplemental orders

11.—(1) The Proceedings on any Motion moved in the House by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the


provisions of this Order (including anything which might have been the subject of a report of the Business Committee or Business Sub-Committee) shall, if not previously concluded, be brought to a conclusion one hour after they have been commenced, and the last foregoing paragraph shall apply as if the Proceedings were Proceedings on the Bill on an allotted day.

(2) If any Motion moved by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order is under consideration at Seven o'clock on a day on which any private business has been set down for consideration at Seven o'clock, the private business shall stand over and be considered when the Proceedings on the Motion have been concluded, and paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted Business) shall apply to the private business so standing over for a period equal to the time for which it so stands over.

(3) If on an allotted day on which any Proceedings on the Bill are to be brought to a conclusion at a time appointed by this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee the House is adjourned, or the sitting is suspended, before that time, no notice shall be required of a Motion moved at the next sitting by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order.

Saving

12. Nothing in this Order or in a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or the Business Committee shall—

(a) prevent any Proceedings to which the Order or Resolution applies from being taken or completed earlier than is required by the Order or Resolution, or
(b) prevent any business (whether on the Bill or not) from being proceeded with on any day after the completion of all such Proceedings on the Bill as are to be taken on that day.

Re-committal

13.—(1) References in this Order to Proceedings on Consideration or Proceedings on Third Reading include references to Proceedings, at those stages respectively, or, on or in consequence of re-committal.

(2) On an allotted day no debate shall be permitted on any Motion to re-commit the Bill (whether as a whole or otherwise), and Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith any Question necessary to dispose of the Motion, including the Question on any amendment moved to the Question.

Interpretation

14. In this Order—

'allotted day' means any day (other than a Friday) on which the Bill is put down as the first Government Order of the Day;

'the Bill' means the Housing Finance Bill;

'Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee' means a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee as agreed to by the Standing Committee;

'Resolution of the Business Committee' means a Resolution of the Business Committee as agreed to by the House.

CIVIL AVIATION

7.8 p.m.

The Minister for Trade (Mr. Michael Noble): I beg to move,
That the statement on Civil Aviation Policy Guidance given to the Civil Aviation Authority in pursuance of section 3(2) of the Civil Aviation Act 1971 with respect to the performance of its functions, a draft of which was laid before this House on 23rd February, be approved in pursuance of section 3(3) of that Act.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): I understand that it will be for the convenience of the House if I say that the following four Prayers, which the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) has been kind enough to tell me he does not intend to move, are available for debate together with the Motion.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Civil Aviation (Route Charges for Navigation Services) (Amendment) Regulations 1972 (S.I., 1972, No. 108), dated 3rd February 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 11th February, be annulled.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Civil Aviation (Documentary Evidence) Regulations 1972 (S.I., 1972, No. 187), dated 14th February 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 17th February, be annulled.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Southampton Airport (Designation) (Detention and Sale of Aircraft) Order 1972 (S.I., 1972, No. 189), dated 14th February 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th February, be annulled.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Civil Aviation (Navigation Services Charges) (Second Amendment) Regulations 1972 (S.I., 1972, No. 188), dated 14th February 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 17th February, be annulled.

Mr. Noble: The guidance to the Civil Aviation Authority, which is set out in paragraphs 7 to 29 of the White Paper before us, must speak for itself and I shall resist the temptation to paraphrase it. There are, however, a number of things I should say about the guidance and about the way in which the authority will be tackling its task, and there are certain related matters I should touch upon. I shall also, if I am allowed, say a little about developments which are currently taking place in the evolution of the civil air transport industry. I should also mention that we have laid


before the House a number of sets of regulations concerned with the assumption by the Civil Aviation Authority of its full functions. We did this so that the House would have a full picture of how the Civil Aviation Authority will carry out its duties.
I think the House will find that the guidance is not a totally unfamiliar document. In large part it follows quite closely the summary which I gave during the Second Reading of the Civil Aviation Bill on 29th March, 1971, though some of the detail has been filled out. In general, I have been able to meet several of the safeguards asked for during our earlier debates. Some of the newer passages in the guidance are therefore of importance and interest. I am thinking particularly of the very first words, in paragraph 7, which are meant to focus the attention of the Authority firmly on the central question of what civil air transport is all about.
It says very clearly that it exists by serving the public and that the Authority should make it its business to find out what the public want and to take full account of it. This reflects strongly the expressed thought in the Edwards Report that the primary long-term objective should be to see that each consumer—and I would include here each would-be consumer—gets what he wants and not what somebody else thinks he ought to want.
Paragraph 7 of the guidance also makes the very important point that, where there is a choice, the Authority should go for less regulation rather than more. This is something that we have lifted from the White Paper of November, 1969, and I am glad to acknowledge this. It is my great hope that the Authority will succeed in clearing away some of the jungle of detailed regulation which I have found as difficult to penetrate as I am sure the industry and the public find it.
A great deal of this detailed control is necessary, especially for safety, but I am sure some of it could be got rid of to the benefit of all concerned. I think paragraph 22, for example, points out certain directions which might be usefully explored in this regard. Indeed, the Authority will need to make simplifications if only to be able to cope with the massive task we have given it.
Paragraph 28 of the guidance is the shortest of all, but none the less important for that. It leaves no room at all for argument. The Authority must go out and consult people, and, reading this together with paragraph 7, one sees that it must clearly consult the users and would-be users of air services. I do not pretend this will be easy—it is difficult to indentify who it is who can speak for air travellers. Some of them have representative bodies but many are unrepresented and their voices can go unheard.
We have not laid down a machinery for this—it will be for the Authority to devise its own machinery so far as this may be necessary and workable. I think the Authority might be wise to feel its way before rushing into any formal arrangements.
Here I should mention one area in which the present consultative arrangements will be changed. With the revocation of a large part of the Civil Aviation (Licensing) Act, I960, the regional civil aviation advisory committees will come to an end. Arrangements have been made for the regional economic planning councils to advise the Authority on regional matters, and they, of course, will cover the whole of the United Kingdom. This too was envisaged in the 1969 White Paper.
Paragraph 29 sets out the financial objective. This was discussed at some length during the Committtee stage of the Bill last year. The guidance gives the Authority the aim of dispensing with support from public funds—from the taxpayer—by 1977–78. We calculate that in its first year of operation the Authority will need some £24 million—possibly a little more—by way of grant. To dispense with this means building up to a position where in five years' time this sum must be recovered annually from the air transport industry, including foreign airlines, in addition to the costs they face at the moment.
Even if we can achieve international agreement, which is necessary for the recovery of the en route navigation service charges, this will be no easy task. Nevertheless, we take the view that the Authority must try. Civil air transport is no longer an infant industry needing the taxpayers' continued support. It is in


our view only right that the services the Authority provides should be paid for by those who use or benefit from them.
I have said that the Authority will have a massive task. This will not be made easier by the rapid and far-reaching changes that are now in prospect. This House will be aware, for example, of the great difficulties that have arisen, not only in this country but throughout the world, in trying to achieve the orderly regulation of charter flights.
Abuse has been widespread, and the rules governing affinity group flights have proved to be largely unworkable. The measures I announced on 24th November, 1971, for the more effective enforcement of these rules are beginning to bite, but I do not pretend that the result is yet satisfactory, since both the public and the airlines may suffer when flights are cancelled because abuses by the middlemen are brought to light.
There is therefore a real and urgent need to find a better set of rules which will allow low-priced air travel to be brought more widely within the reach of the public, but in an open and above-board way that the public can rely on. We must get away from the hole-and-corner business of the back streets.
In my statement of 24th November I said that we were looking into the possibility of introducing a new charter facility—the advance charter—which might replace the affinity group rules. Since then we have had extensive discussions, with other Governments, and a great deal of progress has been made in defining rules that would be internationally acceptable. By normal standards this progress has been rapid, but there is still some way to go before we reach the end of the road. The process is not made easier by the need to ensure that the new arrangements do not turn out to be unnecessarily restrictive of bona fide travellers.
I cannot say when the new facility might be introduced, although I still hope that it may prove possible to start this year, at least for certain areas. There is, for example, a particular urgency in respect of traffic between the United Kingdom and Canada, where strict enforcement of the present rules could lead to a severe reduction of traffic.
I am also anxious to introduce the new facility as soon as possible to South-East Asia, so that the exemptions can be brought to an end. Until this can be achieved, however, it would be most undesirable to go back to reliance upon the affinity rules alone in this area and it would be wrong to cut off the exempt charter services entirely for this interim period.
I have discussed this problem with the Authority, and the Authority has announced that it will give short bridging exemptions to B.O.A.C. and British Caledonian to continue these services at their present rate until 1st July or for as long as may be necessary thereafter until advance charters can be introduced.
This is an illustration of an area in which the Department and the Authority will need to work closely together if the new charter arrangements are to be brought in quickly and successfully. This co-operation is not the sort of thing which can be provided for in legislation or, to any great extent, in the guidance. It is however, something which I am sure can be achieved in practice and will set the pattern of the relationship between the Authority and the Department for the future.
I mentioned British Caledonian, and I must now say something about route transfers.

Mr. Neil Marten: What arrangements is my right hon. Friend making for this Canadian charter work, to which he referred, for the other independents, apart from British Caledonian and B.O.A.C., which are in great difficulty through no fault of their own?

Mr. Noble: I wish I could give my hon. Friend an immediate answer. We are at the moment discussing it with the Canadians. In that case, certainly, he is right: there is a very large share of that market taken by other independents. We do not intend to lose this at all willingly.
The Government accepted the view of the Edwards Committee that an initial transfer of routes was necessary to provide the second force airline with a sufficient base to get it going—

Mr Russell Kerr: A once-for-all operation.

Mr. Noble: This initial transfer has been completed, and the Government have no intention of transferring any further routes in this way. The powers under which the transfers were affected are revoked as from the end of this month, and British Caledonian must stand on its own feet. What I cannot say, however, is that no route will ever again be transferred from one airline to another. The Authority will have the power to do this, and it may often make good sense for a variety of possible reasons, such as to rationalise the airlines' route network. Paragraph 18 of the guidance sets this out very clearly. This is quite different. It was accepted by the previous Administration in their White Paper, and I do not believe anyone would quarrel with it.
I turn now to aviation security and the events of the last few weeks.

Mr. Charles Loughlin (Gloucestershire, West): I am slightly lacking in knowledge about this subject, and I apologise to the Minister. Before he leaves paragraph 17 I should like some explanation. It says:
The Authority should therefore give preference to British Caledonian Airways when licensing an additional British airline to serve an existing scheduled service route.
This seems to be carte blanche for British Caledonian. I am not too au fait with civil aviation problems, so will the Minister develop the point and tell us precisely the extent to which British Caledonian Airways is to have preferential treatment under the guidance notes? As I read them, they seem to give pretty comprehensive preferential treatment.

Mr. Noble: I am certain that this point will be raised a number of times during the debate. I appreciate the interest being taken by the hon. Member for Gloucester, West (Mr. Loughlin) in the problem, because it is an important one. We have debated this perhaps four, five or six times and I have continually said that the preference which might be necessary in the early formative days of British Caledonian is to be neither automatic nor complete but must be based on merit. I will not go further into the matter because I am certain it will be developed later and I shall have an opportunity of answering the debate.

Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones: Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones (Eccles) rose—

Mr. Noble: I will not give way. It may be convenient, because a lot of people want to speak—

Mr. Carter-Jones: Will the Minister clear up this point?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Noble: It will be easier if hon. Members make their points and I try to answer them at the end. That will be easier than five or six hon. Members raising points in a slightly disorderly manner.
I turn now to aviation security and the events of the last few weeks. The Government and all sections of the air transport industry deplore most strongly this latest and most serious case of violence directed at airliners in which innocent passengers and crews have been held to ransom. I do not want to say too much about the counter-measures used in the United Kingdom, but our airlines and the airport authorities, and this will include in the future the Civil Aviation Authority, are closely advised of the Government's assessment of the threat to their operations. We never believed that, the threat had ended, although it may vary from time to time, and appropriate security measures have continued to be maintained particularly during the last few weeks. There is close and continual contact between the Government and the industry within the National Aviation Security Committee, which comprises senior representatives of Government Departments, airlines, airport authorities, the trade unions and the airport security committees which exist at our international airports. Last week there were discussions between Departments and our major airlines about the latest situation.
We have to recognise that there can never be a total guarantee of security, but this is not a cause for despair. Many steps can be taken to protect air transport, and appropriate security measures, consistent with the threat, are being vigorously maintained by our airlines and at our airports.
I commend the guidance to the House. I hope the House will, with me, wish the Civil Aviation Authority, which comes into operation next month, every possible success in the extremely challenging task that it is taking on.

7.26 p.m.

Mr. Roy Mason: I am sure that anyone who takes an interest in civil aviation, no matter on which side of the House, must have been extremely disappointed in the Minister's speech and especially the disgraceful way he skated past the damnable paragraph 17. Suffice it to say at this stage that I shall elaborate on that later.
The White Paper which is giving policy guidance to the Civil Aviation Authority is a most important document, and the guidelines it contains will determine the growth of British civil aviation for many years. The Authority is a unique constitutional public corporation and will be responsible from 1st April for every aspect of civil aviation. Under its vast umbrella it will cater for licensing of routes, price structure, airworthiness certification and so on for both public and private airlines. In other words it is a vast regulatory body which will govern all civil aviation activities. In the matters of air safety, aircraft noise, international traffic routes and pooling arrangements necessitating talks with foreign Governments, the Minister will still be closely involved. But much of what is contained in the guidance document has been debated many times during the proceedings on the Civil Aviation Act.
I will concentrate my remarks, therefore, on the guidance given to the Authority on licensing, to the problem of exempt charters and the priority accorded over all other airlines to the Government's pampered airline, British Caledonian. Only a few weeks ago the Air Transport Licensing Board, which is destined to die in a fortnight, granted routes to British Caledonian on the North Atlantic. In my opinion, it was done with unseemly haste. It was an attempt to get them established before the Authority could take a broader look into the future of route licensing. They were granted in spite of objections from B.O.A.C., Laker Airlines—public and private airlines—and the West Midlands civil aviation advisory committee. They were granted in spite of the preparation of guidance by the new Authority, and they were granted on out-of-date criteria which were certainly not in accord with the guidance given in our White Paper, especially paragraph 33. It was not

urgent, but the Minister let it happen. He was prepared to stand idly by. British Caledonian cannot operate the Atlantic routes for at least a year, but he allowed this major decision to be taken. Already it is thwarting the examination which the Civil Aviation Authority can carry out.
Last year 19 airlines operated an average of 173 transatlantic flights. Twenty-four charter carriers also had licences to operate these routes. The airlines' scheduled services lost £112 million, and with the growth of charters the situation is likely to get worse. Therefore, B.O.A.C.'s position is likely to be worsened as a result of the Board's decision.
There are already too many airlines, national flag carriers, competing for too little business on the transatlantic routes. There are far too many airlines and far too many planes chasing far too few passengers. The Minister should not have allowed a transatlantic licence for British Caledonian to be considered by the Air Transport Licensing Board. The decision does not satisfy our criteria or the guidance the right hon. Gentleman gave during the Committee stage of the Civil Aviation Act. Now we know that it flouts the guidance given in paragraphs 11, 12 and 16 of the White Paper, published only a week later. I fail to see how British Caledonian managed to get its licence, because the White Paper says that in granting air transport licences, the Authority should make sure that airlines have opportunity to operate profitably. In the light of the figures I have given on the transatlantic routes, that will not be achieved very quickly. The White Paper also says that new licences
need to be carefully controlled in order to avoid undue fragmentation of effort".
We know that there are already too many flag carriers and charterers on the transatlantic routes. The White Paper says that if a licence is granted, the aggregate share of the total traffic is to be increased to offset the dis-economies—I cannot see how the Board came to its decision in the light of that—and it should increase the total traffic secured by British airlines more rapidly. Those criteria are not satisfied. Therefore, the licence was granted in unseemly haste on flimsy evidence. Coming on top of the hiving


off of B.O.A.C.'s routes it is another blow against B.O.A.C.
But there is still time for the Authority to delay the introduction of British Caledonian on the transatlantic routes if it is satisfied that the Authority's criteria are not fully met. Meanwhile, the licence should be put in cold storage until the Authority has made a proper appraisal. The Minister can hold up his agreement, because he has to present the matter to the United States Government, and in turn to the American Civil Aeronautics Board, before the licence is fully approved. For more than two years the Government have been discussing with the Americans the problems of the swamping of the Atlantic routes by American carriers. Pan American Airways recently withdrew from the Chicago-London route as a result of the United Kingdom and United States Governments' discussions on the matter. Therefore, the designation of British Caledonian, another British carrier on the route, goes directly against the Government's policy. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will address himself to those two points when he winds up.
I turn to the question of affinity group rules. Clearer guidance will have to be given to the Authority. The rules are supposed to govern private requirements for air traved—the lawful chartering of an aircraft. The rules briefly are: travel should not be the sole objective of the group concerned; there must be something specific which distinguishes the group from the ordinary travelling public; those travelling must have been members of the group for six months; the group should not exceed 20,000 members; and there should be no advertising outside the group. The right hon. Gentleman knows that those rules are being broken. There is illegal chartering. On some major routes, charters being sold openly to the public account for 50 per cent. of the traffic. The scheduled services cannot profit. They are being placed in jeopardy, and chaos is being caused on some routes. Therefore, these illegal practices must be curbed as quickly as possible.
In this connection the Government have another problem, the exempt charters for which they are responsible. Because the rules were being broken, because the Government became embarrassed at the

open advertising with British carriers breaking the International Air Transport Association rules, using European airports when they could not obtain licences from the A.T.L.B., the Government decided to allow British Caledonian to operate a number of flights to the Far East, exempting it from the licensing regulations. They have now given British Caledonian permission for exempt charters on 111 flights. B.O.A.C. has been made a similar offer, but not on that scale. It can now operate a specified number of charter aircraft to the Far East exempt from the licensing regulations up to June of this year. The Government and the Civil Aviation Authority will have to formulate policy on this matter very quickly, for otherwise other foreign flag carriers, members of I.A.T.A. which are feeling aggrieved at this development, will by that method effect a complete breakdown of scheduled services to the Far East and South-East Asian countries. We await with interest the outcome of the right hon. Gentleman's ideas of advanced charters.
I turn now to the more controversial topic of the preference given to British Caledonian in the Government's guidance to the Civil Aviation Authority, and especially that damnable paragraph 17 in the White Paper. The right hon. Gentleman skated over it so quickly that I shall quote most of it. It says:
The Authority should bear in mind the need to give British Caledonian Airways adequate opportunities to develop its route network particularly during this airline's formative years. The authority should therefore give preference to British Caledonian Airways when licensing an additional British airline to serve an existing scheduled service route. The Authority should also give British Caledonian Airways a measure of preference over other airlines in allocating licences for new scheduled service routes, and for non-scheduled services where the number or capacity of British airlines need for the time being to be restricted.
I can hardly believe it. It is a disgracefully biased diktat to the Civil Aviation Authority:
The Authority should bear in mind the need"—
of British Caledonian—
The Authority should therefore give preference to British Caledonian…a measure of preference over other airlines".
This saga of protecting British Caledonian, an airline born out of dishonour and deceit, goes on and on its dishonourable course.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: I am sure the right hon. Gentleman does not mean to get so worked up. I invite him to complete quoting the paragraph so that there shall be no misunderstanding.

Mr. Mason: The paragraph continues:
The Authority should however in every case take account also of the considerations in paragraphs 10, 11 and 12above and the effect of its decisions on the development of other air lines; it is not the Government's intention"—
I repeat "intention", because the right hon. Gentleman makes statements and then disgracefully turns his back on them time after time as we progress with civil aviation policy—
that any preference should be automatic or complete.
That completes the paragraph.
When the hiving off of B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. routes took place, an act of barefaced robbery of State assets to prop up a private airline, the right hon. Gentleman said it was to be a once-for-all operation. He said it many times, from the Press conference right through all the stages of the Civil Aviation Bill.
During the Second Reading debate on the Bill, I said:
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the statement which he made towards the end of last year when he said that a once-for-all transfer of routes to Caledonian-B.U.A."—
as it was then—
would be effected and that there would be none after that. I take it from what he said during the course of his opening remarks that that is true, that that will bind the Authority, and that there will be no more transfer of routes from the Corporations to the independent airline.
The right hon. Gentleman intervened to say:
We have made this point often, but I do not want the right hon. Gentleman to misread anything I have said. I have consistently said that this is a once-for-all operation on this exercise. If the right hon. Gentleman studies the Bill he will see that it is also true that the Civil Aviation Authority may in the future want to rationalise routes at home or overseas and it has this power."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th March, 1971; Vol. 814, c. 1190.]
He represented this as a once-for-all operation. He said that the Authority might want to rationalise. He did not say that it "ought to prefer". He did not say that it was to bear in mind any need to mollycoddle British Caledonian. But paragraph 17 is akin to a direct

ministerial instruction. It is slanted and biased guidance.
Again, on 27th April last year, in Standing Committee considering the Civil Aviation Bill, the Minister said:
There is no question of our imposing upon the Authority a duty to prop up an inefficient, unviable second force. I have said over and over again that having made the necessary essential transfer to get the second force off the ground we must leave it to stand on its own feet."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 27th April, 1971; c. 116.]
Stand on its own feet? With paragraph 17 coming, together with a ministerial directive to the Authority? It is more like granting British Caledonian golden wings. Again, on the Report stage of the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman said:
It will not be given preference in all circumstances. The Civil Aviation Authority will look at the situation at the time, and, if it is clear that Caledonian/B.U.A."—
as it was then called—
and any other airlines are equal on merit, then perhaps preference ought to be given to the second force airline."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th June, 1971, Vol. 820, c. 210.]
In this White Paper, preference is clearly given. Where is the test of equality of merit? Where is that in the White Paper?
I think that the right hon. Gentleman, in view of what is now said in paragraph 17 of the White Paper, has clearly misled the House. The Government are hellbent on a course designed to cripple the corporations. The confiscation of the West African routes from B.O.A.C. has cost it £5½ million in revenue and £1½ million in operating profit. The loss of the Tripoli route cost it another £600,000. The removal of restrictions on British Caledonian's first-class traffic on the African routes will affect B.O.A.C.'s revenue to the extent of £270,000 a year. Permission to grant British Caledonian 111 exempt charter flights to South-East Asia has diverted traffic from B.O.A.C. worth £l¼ million a year. The loss to B.E.A. on the London-Paris route because of British Caledonian's appearance—hiving off—has already cost B.E.A. £500,000, and the estimate for 1972–73 is nearly £2 million. The granting of the North Atlantic routes to British Caledonian, in advance of this policy White Paper, will cost B.O.A.C. £11 million over the next five years. The Government's failure to enforce regulations in respect of affinity group charters has cost


B.O.A.C. between £2 million and £3 million.
Therefore, B.O.A.C. alone has lost so far, through Government directives, through hiving off and through failure to protect it from illegal charters, about £12 million. It expects further losses because of British Caledonian's preferential treatment in the White Paper. B.O.A.C. is in need of at least £9 million compensation from the Government, and so far it has not been offered a penny. It is almost as if the right hon. Gentleman is creating a "lame duck" out of a profitable State enterprise.
I believe this to be the most monstrous and disgraceful episode of the Government. They have no qualms about pilfering the public purse. They confiscate a public corporation's assets and offer no compensation and then dishonestly plough on to prop up a private airline.
I warn once again the Government, the House and British Caledonian in particular that this policy will be reversed. The confiscated routes will be returned to the corporations and the bias in this aviation policy will be removed. While condemning the Government for this aspect of their aviation policy—reminding the right hon. Gentleman once and for all about the turn-round that is revealed in the White Paper—I ask him, the arch-villain of this policy, noble by name, to examine his conscience and realise how far ignobility has crept in.

Mr. Onslow: Before the right hon. Gentleman sits down—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu): Mr. Finsberg.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: The right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) said that this was the most disgraceful policy that the Government had ever put before the House. Less than 20 hon. Members opposite seem to think that there is any justification in his case. If one removes from his speech his continuing and monotonous bitterness against British Caledonian, not much of it remains except a few dubious statistical calculations. He must learn that British Caledonian is here to stay by demand of the travelling public, not just by demand of politicians.
I believe that the guidance paper indicates a trio of objectives. It shows clearly that the State corporations have their position confirmed, that British Caledonian has its special position recognised and that the private sector is acknowledged to have a continuing future. I would have thought that these objectives would commend themselves to all sensible Members, certainly to hon. Members who do not go about blinkered by party political prejudice.

Mr. Russell Kerr: On a point of order. As far as I know this is the maiden contribution by the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg) to aviation debates, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can we know whether he has any financial interest to declare?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: He has not declared one.

Mr. Finsberg: I do not have one to declare. I make my speeches standing, unlike the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Russell Kerr).
I believe that the White Paper is a start, but I do not believe that it is sufficient. I want to ask more about the new Civil Aviation Authority. What part is it to play in all this? Ought it to model itself more on the lines of the American Civil Aeronautics Board? Should it actively initiate air transport policies? Ought it to carry out a substantial programme of economic research so that it can take an independent and authoritative view of economic matters? So far, this has never been done in this country.
The Air Transport Licensing Board, with almost no staff, has virtually been a court of first appeal, which in many cases has been overturned by more than one Government. It has never done a proper job. Ought not the new Authority to ensure a much fuller presentation and a much fuller publication of data on which it is possible to judge licence applications and to raise professional standards?
Something else that the new Authority could also do, with a sound knowledge of the air transport system, is to become a major contributor to the international air transport policies that should be followed by the United Kingdom. It should be an initiator and not always a follower.


That concept may not have been recognised as possible in the past.
Of one thing I am certain; the appointment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), gives encouragement to those of us who know him as a thinker and a doer. He will be no tame creature of any Government, and he will not allow his Authority to be dictated to by any Government.
But he has a responsibility and the C.A.A. has a responsibility, a responsibility to make itself what the A.T.L.B. never was and never could be—a useful forward-thinking organisation, of help to British civil aviation. If that is its job, I am certain that, like the stupid threats by the Labour Party to repeal the Act setting up commercial television, the nonsense spoken by the right hon. Member for Barnsley will pass down in history as one of the many pledges by the Labour Party which were never redeemed.

7.52 p.m.

Mr. Russell Kerr: I begin by offering my congratulations to the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) on his appointment as Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority. As most of us know, he is not inexperienced in civil aviation, having been a Minister of Aviation. On this side of the House we look to him, by his qualities of fair-mindedness and clear thinking, to put right some of the worst provisions of the Civil Aviation Act and the guidance issued under it. We are not at all displeased by his appointment.
I begin the rather less happy part of my remarks by saying that, having read the so-called guidance that is being offered to the industry, the House and the public, I greatly regret that it is not possible to put the Minister in the dock for grand larceny. The guidance contains such an opening of the flood gates in favour of the righthon. Gentleman's political pals and financial backers—presumably going back to the last election and before—that no less a description would fit the facts. I am speaking of the right hon. Gentleman in his ministerial capacity rather than in his rather pleasant personal capacity.
I take the House back to an event which my hon. Friend the Member for

Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield) and I were privileged to witness, on 2nd August, 1970, shortly after the Government came to power. Sensing that something might be being "tried on", my hon. Friend and I decided that it was worth going across the way to the Press conference which the right hon. Gentleman had called at short notice in the premises of the Board of Trade. I speak for my hon. Friend as well as myself when I say that we were very pleased that we went.
Under persistent questioning from the 40 or 50 reporters present, time and again the right hon. Gentleman stated that this was a once-for-all operation. He repeated the assurance in the House some time later. Like Peter before him, he made the denial thrice. He made the statement that this was a once-for-all operation, that Caledonian would have to stand on its own feet, and so on—ad nauseam, as I now think. In his anxiety to repay political debts, the right hon. Gentleman was prepared gravely to mislead the Press and shortly afterwards in a similar fashion to mislead this honourable House. Subsequent to the announcement, he repeated in specific terms the assurance that this was a once-for-all operation.
I should like to read the opening sentence of the nefarious paragraph 17 of the guidance, for it cannot be repeated too often. It says:
The Authority should bear in mind the need to give British Caledonian Airways adequate opportunities to develop its route network particularly during this airline's formative years.
The two sentences that follow nail the lie:
The Authority should therefore give preference to British Caledonian Airways when licensing an additional British airline to serve an existing scheduled service route. The Authority should also give British Caledonian Airways a measure of preference over other airlines in allocating licences for new scheduled service routes, and for non-scheduled services where the number or capacity of British airlines need for the time being to be restricted.
I make no apology for reading that, because in the light of the subsequent announcement it is a revealing and nefarious part of the document. It makes a nonsense of the Minister's promise that Caledonian would receive no unjustified preference in its operations. In fact, the direct opposite is the truth and provisions


in the document and the Act are designed precisely to give wholly unjustifiable preference to this so-called second force airline at the expense of the two public corporations and the British public, particularly the British travelling public.
Some may say that at the time the undertakings were given, and the promise was made, the financial situation of British Caledonian was not known, that the Minister could not know that the friends of Caledonian in the City, and elsewhere, were far more interested in fast bucks than in developing the potential of a private airline over many years, as B.O.A.C. and many other airlines have had to do and have done, to the great benefit of the British taxpaper and the British public generally.
To that we reply—and we have done so before tonight—that when this public "steal" was first mooted many warnings were given by people in the industry that the international air industry was entering upon difficult times. There were two main reasons. First, there had been, and there has continued to be, a flattening out of the growth curves and a fall in the average percentage payload of most, if not all, international airlines. Secondly, there was the ever-increasing cost of equipment, coupled with an increasing rate of obsolescence, as competition became more fierce and as charter operations, in defiance of the group affinity rules of I.A.T.A., became more widespread. These pressures, which have gone on ever since, were bringing the whole apparatus of scheduled airline operations into jeopardy.
We warned the Minister that all that glittered was not gold and that Caledonian's largely anonymous backers had not come forward with the financial backing in the quantities hoped for and, from reports in the industry, it seems that they still have not done so. From what one knows and learns about the present problems, they are not likely to do so.
There is no great mystery about why this has happened. In spite of the taunts of the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg), the Labour Party is firmly determined that people who lend themselves to this larceny on a grand scale should not benefit, if we can do anything about it. I say in passing that, like my right hon. Friend the Member

for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), I was truly horrified by the recent decision of the A.T.L.B., as a final act of grace, or disgrace, to award these transatlantic routes to Caledonian at a time when B.O.A.C, the national flag carrier, like most if not all other international operators of the transatlantic route, had found itself in increasing difficulties with pay-loads and many other problems by no means easy of solution.
That seemed to us, then as now, to be a very cynical disregard of the problems that this industry faces and will continue to face for a considerable time. Hon. Members should make no mistake; there will be a swift re-nationalisation of these stolen routes as soon as the present Government reach the day of reckoning and a Labour Government return to power.
As is fairly well known, over two decades and more, the British airline industry has been largely based upon the impressive performance of the twin pillars, B.O.A.C. and B.E.A.—both leaders in their respective fields of air operation and, as one person said recently, jewels in the industrial crown of this country. They are achievements of which the British nation, whose money has gone to develop these airlines, can justly be proud. In terms of simple justice, we believe that there can be no question of treating as an equal a Johnny-come-lately airline, or a consortium, such as British Caledonian Airlines with the airlines which have borne the heat and burden of the day over more than two decades and have greatly benefited this country, its taxpayers, sucessive Chancellors of the Exchequer, and especially the travelling public.
Therefore, we feel strongly that this attempt to take from the people of this country that which is theirs and which has been built up by many years' sweat and hard work, and intelligent application of techniques of running an airline successfully, must be stopped at all costs.
As one of the airport Members of the House, I add my plea on behalf of the workers in the industry. The morale of workers at London Airport has been a byword in the industry for many years. Despite the many difficulties of international airline operation, they have shown a willingness to adapt and to contribute greatly to the morale of their respective corporations which is second


to none throughout the international airline business. It is not right to leave unsaid that they feel that these measures to steal that which they have helped to build over the years cannot possibly be justified. Along with my hon. Friends, I enter the strongest possible protest on their behalf, coupled with the promise that we shall put things right as soon as the voters of Britain allow us to do so.

8.3 p.m.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: The hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Russell Kerr) is consistent in every speech he makes. They are all equally wrong-headed, misinformed and doctrinaire. I congratulate him on sticking to his usual pattern. This is a sad occasion for him, and we can understand why he feels bitterly about it. It is a bit like the funeral of an old friend. After tonight, he will be unable to make that kind of speech because the business of running the civil aviation industry of Britain will be devolved by the House to the Civil Aviation Authority.
I suppose the hon. Gentleman had to render his speech once more with feeling; but never again. It is done now, and we can discuss more serious things such as the speeches of the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason). One cannot exactly congratulate the right hon. Gentleman for consistency, as I hope I can show by a few quotations from HANSARD.
A couple of years ago, almost to the day, the right hon. Member for Barnsley was standing where my right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade stood when he opened the debate. The right hon. Member for Barnsley was telling us a number of things about the then Government's policy and his understanding of what was and what was not a good thing for British civil aviation. In HANSARD for 18th March, 1970, I find the following specific and clear statement:
We think that the best national advantage would flow from an amalgamation"—
that is to say, of two independent airlines—
that would result in an independent airline strong enough to compete on the North Atlantic.
He seems to have changed his views since then. Again, in the same speech, he was

not only encouraging the A.T.L.B. to be independent but also saying, about the North Atlantic licence application, which had been refused by the A.T.L.B.
The A.T.L.B. did, however, give a very broad hint that if a stronger application was presented by a combination of airlines it might be granted."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th March, 1970; Vol. 798, c. 435.]
I know that the right hon. Gentleman feels that he has to say these things and make these grand statements about things that will not happen because a Labour Government will not return to power, but he might do himself the favour of reading his own past speeches.

Mr. Mason: Surely the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that there is any difference in what I have said now and then. That was two to three years ago, long before the Civil Aviation Authority guidelines had been prepared, two to three years away from the date when the C.A.A. was to be established. My charge tonight is that the A.T.L.B. has taken a major decision one week before the Authority's guidance came out, not two to three years ago.

Mr. Onslow: The right hon. Gentleman must not suppose that I quote his speeches because I like their deathless prose or because I want to show him how consistent he has been. My purpose in quoting his speeches is to prove that he has been standing on his head, which he has. Two years ago he envisaged the independents providing stronger competition, and winning a greater share of business for British carriers on world routes. It is very foolish of him this evening to enter the childish and unfounded complaints we have heard, which only expose him to the charge of political opportunism.

Mr. Mason: Will the hon. Gentleman give way? I wish to clear up and to prove the point.

Mr. Onslow: No, I will let the right hon. Gentleman clear it up later; no doubt he will find an occasion some time within the next four or five years.
Turning to more serious matters, and leaving the fact that the right hon. Member for Barnsley has been standing on his head, I want to consider the guidance before the House, and commend it to my right hon. Friend the Member for


Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), who will have the task of interpreting what it says and putting it into practice—first, as my right hon. Friend the Minister would agree, this is not a document which will please everybody. There is probably something in it which pleases most people, but probably also a little here and there with which many will quarrel, for different reasons. But everything obviously depends on how the words of the document are interpreted in practice.
The country is extremely fortunate to have a head of the C.A.A. of the calibre of my right hon. Friend, in whom it can place such confidence. British aviation could not have had a better man to act as the head of the C.A.A. I say that with all the more conviction because I know that my right hon. Friend is very skilled in making things mean what they ought to mean. I can point out one or two instances of where this may be necessary.
Taking paragraph 7 first, the injunction is there laid on the Authority to inform itself of the public's needs. I understand that the A.T.L.B. used to get informed of the public's needs to the tune of not less than four but not more than 15 letters a year from the British public. That may not have been a perfect method of finding out of what the public was thinking. I hope that the Authority will be much more positive, that it will go out and find out what the public wants, rather than simply sit back and satisfy itself in some modest way that it is giving the public what it thinks the public needs. Section 3(1)(a) of the Act says that the Authority is charged with catering for all substantial categories of public demand, and I am sure my right hon. Friend will have taken due note of what the Act says as well as what the policy document says.
Coming to paragraph 11 of the policy document, as many of us know well there is a good deal of unease on the part of the other independents about the situation in which they will find themselves under the Authority, and they have, I think wrongly—just as hon. Members opposite have wrongly—fastened on paragraph 17 as being the one which matters most when it comes to their future ability to win new business. I take paragraph 11 as the most important and over-riding paragraph.

I hope very much that my right hon Friend the Minister will confirm that this is the main injunction to the Authority, that, so far as possible, efficient British airlines shall have the opportunity to operate profitably, and that there is no question of automatically and completely giving preference to British Caledonian Airways. I am glad that paragraph 17 ends by stating that such an intention does not exist.
Paragraph 20 mentions the question of aerodromes. Here the guidance is less specific than the Act. Section 33 of the Act lays a much more positive duty on the Authority about what it is to do in relation to aerodrome research and the establishing of the requirement for new aerodromes. I hope that my right hon. Friend will remember that the Act contains a slightly stronger injunction in this respect than the guidance appears to envisage.
I am uneasy to see in paragraph 22 an instruction to the Authority
to have regard to the need to restrain increases in charges for domestic air services
when the British Airports Authority, with which the Civil Aviation Authority will work in harness, appears to have no such injunction laid on it. There is a contradiction here, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will find a way of clearing it up, even if the financial duties laid on the B.A.A. have to be altered. It seems to some of us that an unjustifiable burden is being passed on to the industry through the medium of increased B.A.A. charges, and, apart from the fact that this does not give the B.A.A. the necessary stimulus to be economic in its operation, British airlines find themselves having to compete at a disadvantage with overseas operators.
I am not sure that paragraph 25 gives the positive incentive to stimulate quietness in airline operations which the Authority should be seeking to apply. There is in this paragraph a passive rather than an active approach to noise reduction. I hope that in practice the stimulus which comes from the Authority will be such as to make it clear to operators that they will get financial benefit from making their operations quieter and. thus, more acceptable to the community. Unless that stimulus exists, we shall not have quiet engines in general service.
The task which falls to the new Chairman of the Authority is important. We have confidence in his ability to discharge it and in the experience and skill of those who are to join him on the board of the Authority. I am sure that in 12 months, when we have the opportunity of studying the first report on the discharge of the duties of the C.A.A.; we shall find that a great many of the fears and anxieties which have been expressed in this and preceding debates will have turned out to be unreal and that the sensible and practical way in which the Act has worked will prove, even to the satisfaction of the right hon. Member for Barnsley, that British civil aviation is on a sound footing at last and that we can forget about the stupid, doctrinaire wrangling which has bedevilled it for so long.

8.14 p.m.

Mr. Dan Jones: I agree with the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) only in his kind and truthful references to the new Chairman of the Authority, the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter).
I support the observations of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason). It is not we on this side of the House who are guilty of what the hon. Member for Woking terms foolish prejudices. We have made no attack on privately-owned enterprises, particularly those which have been successful. The publicly-owned industries are a success, but that success is being eroded by private enterprise. If there is prejudice, it comes from that side of the coin and not from the side referred to by the hon. Member for Woking.
I appeal to the Minister to defer implementing the White Paper until the new Authority has got going. The new Chairman of the Authority is known to and respected by the House. He would not give undue preference to a publicly-owned industry. If the Minister can have confidence in anybody, he can have it in the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames. I certainly have confidence in him. But it is most unfair that we should all pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman and then proceed to tie his hands by the White Paper. This is not good sense. If the gentleman concerned was the type of broad legislator with the type of intelligence

and experience to which reference has been made, I should be prepared to subscribe to that thinking. But we should allow the right hon. Gentleman latitude to determine the ways and means of the Authority without putting every dot and comma in place.
I wish to refer to paragraphs 9, 16 and the now rather infamous paragraph 17 of the guidance. Paragraph 9 reads:
In providing air traffic and navigation services the Authority should have due regard to the interests of both military and civil users, including general aviation interests, so as to make safe, efficient and economical use of the limited air space that is available".
I do not quarrel with that. To allow the privately-owned British Caledonian Airways to operate on the North Atlantic route is precisely the opposite of what that phrase is intended to convey. If the air space is limited, why have it used by new operators? I do not know why the Minister should smile at that.

Mr. Noble: Surely the hon. Gentleman is not seriously suggesting that paragraph 9 is intended to stop the growth of civil aviation. If he carries his argument along that line, we must stop extra flights by any company.

Mr. Jones: I do not suggest that at all. I am quoting the language used in the paragraph, which is clear—
use of the limited air space that is available".
We are talking in present terms. If the Minister says that there are possibilities for development, all I can say is that he is not aware of contemporary developments. T.W.A. and Pan Am have recently made an agreement with B.O.A.C. to limit the services on the North Atlantic route simply because the existing services are uneconomic. Surely the Minister is aware of that. If the existing services are uneconomic, how can additional services make the situation any different?
Paragraph 16 says that the Authority should be satisfied:
(a) the traffic is likely to be sufficient to support competing services profitably within a reasonable time.
This statement is surely contradictory to recent events and is a matter upon which the incoming Chairman of the Authority should be allowed to adjudicate. It is most unfair and almost offensive to the new Chairman to instruct him in the way that the White Paper does. I appeal to


the Minister to look again at these broad principles and, if he has confidence in the Chairman, give him and the Authority the opportunity to make these decisions for themselves.
The words of paragraph 17 seem to be unfair to B.O.A.C. The paragraph says that British Caledonian is to be given preference over existing operators, but we know full well that the existing operators are hard put to it to make a financial success of these routes.
The Minister referred to the route to and from Canada, which is the North Atlantic route. He must know that his references to that route fit in ill with certain passages in the White Paper. Harsh references have been made to the Minister and what are described as his friends in private industry. Here there is an element of commercial brigandage, taking from a publicly-owned industry routes which it has developed over the years and for which it has earned a good repute in world aviation circles. This Government more than any post-war Government are demanding that publicly-owned industries should make a profit. I do not object to that, but I do object when stipulations are laid upon publicly-owned industries which those industries cannot carry out because of handicaps which are placed upon them. I am reminded that in the early 1950s a Conservative Government took away from the publicly-owned transport industry all the lucrative parts of rural transport and left the publicly-owned industry with the remnants and criticised it bitterly for not making it pay.
I appeal to the Government to allow the eminently suitable Chairman to guide the Authority without tying him hand and foot before he has a chance to do the job.

8.23 p.m.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: Although I welcomed the setting up of the Civil Aviation Authority in the debate last year, I have mixed feelings about the Civil Aviation Policy Guidance White Paper. No doubt if a new Authority is being set up to control civil aviation for the foreseeable future, it needs, like any other new piece of machinery, a set of instructions, but I agree with some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones) who perhaps

feels as I do that the White Paper attempts to lay down too rigid guidelines for the new Authority. A new Authority must have flexibility if it is to discover its true level and to be effective in the job for which it has been appointed. I wonder whether we are wise to cross the "Ts" and dot the "Is" ahead of letting the Authority do that in operation. I would rather we had left the Chairman of the new Authority to evolve the best method of operation. I can, however, see the case for an instruction book for a new piece of machinery, and no doubt the Chairman will be allowed a great measure of flexibility in the way that he carries out his task.

Mr. F. A. Burden: My hon. Friend will no doubt recall the difficulties of the Air Transport Licensing Board. There was a right of appeal from decisions of the A.T.L.B. and on several occasions its decisions were overturned. I hope that the Minister will not impose a similar control over the activities of the new board.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention. He underlines the point that I was making.
I welcome paragraph 7 and its bold statement that civil air transport exists by serving the public—a point that was reinforced by my right hon. Friend in his opening speech. But from then on the paragraph seems to qualify the meaning of civil air transport until it becomes clear that B.O.A.C, B.E.A. and British Caledonian have the prime if not the sole place in this meaning.
Here I am, in the slightly odd position of supporting the stance of the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) if not his philosophy. I have received, as no doubt have other hon. Members, a fairly extensive memorandum from several independent airlines—Britannia Airways, Court Line Aviation, Dan-Air Services, Laker Airways, Lloyd International, Transmeridian Air Carriage, and Donaldson International Airways. In that memorandum these independent airlines point out that between them they deploy a fleet of 83 aircraft worth £72·5 million, which carry 4·7 million passengers and a substantial amount of cargo every year, yet in paragraph 15 of the White Paper they see themselves discriminated against in favour of British Caledonian,


B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. The White Paper argues that these three airlines should be given adequate opportunities to compete effectively in the world civil air transport market. In view of this statement it is small wonder that the airlines in their memorandum say:
The Minister for Trade is already implementing successfully a policy of severe discrimination against the independent airlines operating charter services which may soon result in further airlines ceasing to trade.
They end by saying:
One large independent airline competing against the State Corporations on its own does not constitute true free enterprise competition.
I agree with that statement and believe in competition because of the better service that comes with it. Even if some of the wording in their memorandum is unduly strong, I sympathise with those airlines and it is up to us to ask ourselves what philosophy underlies our civil aviation policy. If it is that we believe in more competition and greater service to the public, I do not see how we are to achieve this by giving quite so much to one airline in the shape of British Caledonian at the expense of the airlines that I have listed.
I must also take some exception to the contentious paragraph 17. It is difficult to see why the Authority should be instructed to give preference. That seems to take away from the Authority its right to decide what is best in the circumstances at a particular moment of time. It is instructed to give preference to British Caledonian when licensing an additional British airline to serve an existing scheduled service route. By the same token the Authority is advised to give British Caledonian a measure of preference over other airlines in allocating licences for new scheduled service routes and for non-scheduled services.
My right hon. Friend has reminded us that we should qualify paragraph 17 with paragraph 10 but, apart from feeling that paragraph 17 has little to do with a competitive economy in civil aviation, I do not see how one can square those two paragraphs. Either it is an instruction that suggests that it is an injunction to the Civil Aviation Authority, or there is a measure of freedom of decision which should be stated but with which the word

"instruction" does not seem to me to tally.
I suspect that the air corporations still feel that there is an ideological opposition to them in the Conservative Party. This is unfortunate, but I can understand some of their ill-feeling and frustration, particularly after some of their route structures were taken away—even though they were told that this would happen—to set up a second force airline. Since the Lagos route has gone to British Caledonian, I wonder what will happen if Concorde operated by B.O.A.C. goes on the South African route and has to stop at Lagos. In that event there will be quite a kerfuffle over route structures in West Africa.
However, I believe it is reasonable to recognise the grievance felt by B.O.A.C. about what has been done to its network. I have had some experience of its route structures and I believe its service is admirable. Furthermore, it has built up the structures with much hard work and competence. Therefore, I can understand how that corporation must have felt to be told that part of its routes were to be taken away and given to a new airline. Much as I like and admire those who run British Caledonian, and I wish them well, I cannot forget that B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. are the taxpayers' property. We must not let the Civil Aviation Authority accede to further route changes in respect of British Caledonian if, by so doing, it puts at risk the profit-making capability of B.O.A.C. or B.E.A. I take comfort from my right hon. Friend's assurance that there will be no route transfers as such, but paragraph 18 reveals a loophole and I hope that it will not be allowed to develop.
I now turn to paragraph 25 and I question its exact meaning. As I understand it, the Authority will not be the arbiter of aircraft noise levels but will act merely as an advisory authority to the Government. Will this, in effect, mean that the Authority will tell the Government what noise levels should be laid down, but will not have the power itself to lay down levels without ministerial approval? No doubt this is a technical nicety, but I do not want the Authority to be either Ministry-or Government-dominated.
The Authority should be what its title implies—the Civil Aviation Authority of


the United Kingdom—and it should continually be heedful of the second half of the first sentence in paragraph 7.
the Authority should inform itself of the public's needs and take full account of them.
In other words, I want the Civil Aviation Authority to stand on its own feet as an aviation authority, acting on behalf of the public rather than as a servant of either the Government or of the airlines. Thus, in terms of aircraft noise, I hope that it will press on the Government and the airlines the possibilities that exist for improving the noise limitation procedures over and above what has already been done.

8.36 p.m.

Mr. Brynmor John: As hon. Members who were on the Committee will know, I spent some time trying to clarify the criteria we should apply to regional air services. It seems to me that whilst many hon. Members have spoken of the necessity for air services to have a regional rôle, very few have got down to establishing the criteria for enabling a rôle to be played, or have said exactly what rôle is envisaged for such regional services.
Therefore, in welcoming to the chairmanship of the Authority the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) I appeal to him in advance to consider as one of his tasks when he takes up his office the examination of the whole question of regional air services, and making sure that the policy framework laid down is coherent and comprehensive so that civil aviation can be developed throughout the whole of the British Isles on clearly understood principles in order to serve a purpose and not be, so to speak, merely social ambulances, as some unfortunately are at the moment.
Paragraphs 20 and 21 of the White Paper do not seem to me to fulfil the undertakings or promises given in Committee by the Minister, but the guidance document has the advantage that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames is at least left without any biased guidance. He is left with a free hand to deal with regional air services, and I hope that he and his Authority will look carefully at that aspect.
One of the most blurred problems is how we are to pay for such regional air services. We considered whether we should cross-subsidise routes or whether the Government, having determined that a route should be maintained for social services, should bear the responsibility. In this respect we find a little guidance in paragraph 22, which says:
This does not for example preclude the cross-subsidisation of the new services…".
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will also look closely at the revenue side of regional air services, and establish criteria which are easily understood and will be workable for a future regional air pattern.
Having said that, I return to paragraphs 11, 12, 17, and so on. It seems to me that in laying down this guidance the Minister has gone behind promises he has made specifically several times regarding these routes. I have just said that when dealing with regional air services the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames has an open book; that he is at least equally free to choose any measure he thinks to be of advantage. In view of the encomiums rightly heaped upon the right hon. Gentleman from all sides of the House, I find it surprising that hon. Members opposite have so little faith in his judgment and skill at administering the Authority that the guidance that he is being given is so heavily biased in favour of one airway.
I had some sympathy for the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson), who spoke of the other independent airlines. The secret is that the system which the right hon. Gentleman is setting up is not one of free enterprise or of true competition as the hon. Gentleman knows it. It is the opposition of a State monopoly and a private one. He recognises that the present British Caledonian set-up is not free enterprise, and he laments it. I say the opposite. Having recognised it as not being free enterprise and, therefore, not having fulfilled the criteria which hon. Members opposite like to commend so heartily to the British public in their election addresses, that is every reason for saying that private enterprise in this area has been regarded as unworkable, and, therefore, it is a matter to be regarded as administered by State airlines.
The first sentence of paragraph 17 deals with adequate opportunities for British Caledonian to develop its route network, particularly during the airline's formative years, but not, despite what the Minister said, exclusively in its first years. Unless this wording is amended, the Civil Aviation Authority will have to bear in mind the need for British Caledonian to have adequate opportunities to develop its route network throughout its career, however long it may be. I suggest that that is a contradiction of what the right hon. Gentleman said—[Interruption.] Apparently he does not agree, but we know that his reading of documents is not quite the same as that of other hon. Members. The words used in paragraph 17 are:
particularly during this airline's formative years.
It follows logically that it does not mean exclusively. I ask the hon. Gentleman, even on the basis of his own case, to look at this aspect to see whether it should not be more tightly drawn.
Paragraph 17 speaks of licensing an additional British airline and of giving preference to British Caledonian Airways. They have been given preference between Gatwick and New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. How does the A.T.L.B. decision square with the guidance in paragraph 16(a) that the traffic is likely to be sufficient to support competing services profitably within a reasonable time? The major U.S. airlines are dropping out of these routes because they believe that they are over-serviced. Clearly, it cannot satisfy paragraph 16(a). Equally clearly, it cannot satisfy paragraph 16(c), that the aggregate share of total traffic that is secured by the British airlines is likely to be increased to an extent that will then offset any lasting diseconomies.
Clearly this will not work in the forseeable future. I ask the Minister to deal with paragraph 16 as it affects the A.T.L.B.'s decision to give these routes to British Caledonian. I ask him also to deal with the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) that, as he has some authority still over this decision, he should allow the Civil Aviation Authority to look at the whole matter before he

refers it to the American Civil Aeronautics Board for its approval.
When the right hon. Gentleman spoke about the airline standing on its own feet, he could not have read paragraph 17. What it means, if anything, is that, according to the guidance given to the Civil Aviation Authority, British Caledonian must be kept going however lame it is and even when it becomes a completely lame duck. The show was given away by the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg), who said that it is all right for starters but that it is not sufficient to be going on with. The Government must make that clear. We have had two or three once-for-all operations now. I do not think that the British public will be endeared indefinitely by the sight of the right hon. Gentleman saying at the Dispatch Box that this latest gift to British Caledonian is a once-for-all operation. We must know whether the intention is that British Caledonian Airways should stand on its own feet as an operator and that, if it fails, the Civil Aviation Authority will not be expected, by the biased nature of the terms of paragraph 17, to continue it in perpetuity by hiving-off to it routes which were formerly held by State airlines.
I understand that British Caledonian Airways has written to some hon. Members saying that it really wants the Civil Aviation Authority to get on with its job untrammelled and that it will abide by the consequences. If so, the Minister for Trade ought to re-write paragraph 17 and take British Caledonian Airways at its word. We would then feel a great deal happier. As it is, he has perpetuated a bias not in favour of the free enterprise system but in preference for one favoured son. That is not the free enterprise system. If so, I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends, who will be responsible for this subject in the next Government, will clearly state that only the State airlines ought to be allowed to operate and that they will take back these routes from British Caledonian Airways.

8.46 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Warren: First, I want to refer to Statutory Instrument 1972, No. 108, which is concerned with the recovery of route navigation facilities charges. The development of the need to recover money expended on these charges is a welcome change from burdening the


taxpayer with the job of paying for facilities which he does not use unlesss he is a passenger in a civil aircraft.
B.O.A.C. has stated that whereas in 1970–71 it paid £650,000 for this type of service, within three years it anticipates paying well over £2 million. Landing charges are already recovered through passenger tickets. I hope that my right hon. Friend will encourage the British Airways Board to press very hard, through I.A.T.A., for the implementation of this international route charge. This charge, which has not been accepted universally, is really the way by which this money should be recovered.
I draw attention to the fact that the major demand for and the load on new air traffic control facilities over the next 10 years will come, primarily, not from scheduled passenger aircraft but from business jets. At the moment there are 1,200 on order or on option in the western world, of which 900 will be made in Western Europe. That represents a vast extra demand on air traffic control services, not only in Europe. I had a note the other day about the development of the new Lagos Airport, on which £3 million is to be spent by the Nigerian Government on new air traffic control facilities. The problem is international. Therefore, the recovery ought to be international, through I.A.T.A.
Secondly, I should like to mention the independent airlines referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson). He referred to the seven United Kingdom airlines and the 83 aircraft which they represent.
I ask my right hon. Friend to consider yet again paragraph 17 of the Civil Aviation Policy Guidance, which states:
The Authority should also give British Caledonian Airways a measure of preference over other airlines in allocating licences for new scheduled service routes".
The phrase "over other airlines", appeals to bothsides of the House, because it is over British Airways Board airlines as well as over the other independents. That is a rather unfortunate directive with which to lumber the Authority before it even gets down to business. The real problem is that neither paragraph 17 nor paragraph 15 recognises that civil air transportation is a growth industry on a substantial scale.
I now turn to the subject of charters. I do not approve of the Department of Trade and Industry's airport guerrilla warfare against the independents. The sad thing about it is that the airlines to which my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East referred have said privately that they find that they have only about another six months to live if this persecution goes on. It may be an acceptable political dogma to hon. Gentlemen opposite to know that the independents will be forced out of business, but the tragedy is that the business will not automatically go to either British Caledonian—the favoured independent carrier—or to British Airways Board airlines.
It is already clearly evident that it will go to United States independent carriers—and that will be a great tragedy. While my right hon. Friend has to grapple with the problem of how to cope with affinity charters—an abuse that has been going on world-wide—the British carriers will be the ones to suffer. British independent carrier airlines are among the least guilty in the world, and it is rather a shame that we should allow our own officialdom to strangle this part of a growth industry.
Turning to the North Atlantic, it is a little difficult to reconcile what the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) said today with what he said on 18th March, 1970:
our independent airlines are a national asset."—[Official Report, 18th March, 1970: Vol. 798, c. 435.]
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that the airlines on the North Atlantic route had lost about £112 million. The problem is that over the years all the scheduled carriers who are members of I.A.T.A. have tended to be less and less responsive to the market which they are supposed to serve. They have failed to recognise that there is a decreasing international demand for scheduled high-frequency services but a considerably growing demand for services which offer the cheapest possible fares to the furthest distance that can be marketed.
This growth of North Atlantic passenger traffic which has occurred over the last 10 years—and there have been problems over the last two or three years for carriers—is, without doubt, going to be resumed, and both the Common Market


and Boeing studies on the subject show that over the next five years the demand for passengers and freight transport across the North Atlantic is likely almost to double.
B.O.A.C. says that although it has been forced down to carrying only about 24 per cent. of the scheduled traffic across the North Atlantic—the lowest amount that it has ever carried—it hopes to raise it to 32 per cent. of the total demand. Here I should like to pay a tribute to a corporation which is all too frequently maligned. I admire its determination, and particularly that of its chairman, Mr. Keith Granville, in setting out to recapture the traffic which it has lost. But even if it does achieve 32 per cent. of the share, it will still mean that two-thirds of the traffic coming to this country will be carried by foreign carriers. I do not see anything which should stop either British Caledonian or anybody else from having a go at capturing some of that traffic.
For the right hon. Member for Barnsley to say that this policy will be reversed flies in the face of the fact that B.O.A.C, with all its expertise, does not believe that it can get above 32 per cent. or 33 per cent. of the total traffic into its own market. Over and over again one has to keep saying—and hoping that it will sink in—that air traffic is international and not a private preserve over which we have unique domestic jurisdiction. While the Opposition offer to restrict our jurisdiction in this country, the rest of the airlines which operate across the North Atlantic will be only too delighted with those policies.
On one route which British Caledonian is going to operate—the London-Los Angeles-Australia route—it is offering an entirely new service, which does not compete in any way with B.O.A.C. At the moment B.O.A.C. offers five indirect routes to Los Angeles per week, carrying 12 passengers per flight. That is in comparison with the services offered by Pan American and T.W.A.—14 direct services non-stop from London to Los Angeles. Therefore, one must remember that the North Atlantic stretches all the way from New York to the Pacific and is not just the pond off Land's End or Wales.
At the moment, B.O.A.C. is getting only 2 per cent. of this market to the

West coast of the United States—the fastest growing market of the whole of the North Atlantic traffic. Even if that is fulfilled, whole areas of the United States are untouched by either British Caledonian or B.O.A.C. For instance, no services are offered by British carriers to Atlanta, Dallas and Houston, in one of the fastest growth areas of the United States.
I hope that my right hon. Friend, the C.A.A. or someone will pay attention to the tremendous problems that will face passengers in London Airport Central this year, when the facilities will simply not be able to cope with even the most pessimistic traffic forecast that we have heard tonight.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East talked about restriction of guidance to the C.A.A. The guidance has been carefully thought out to enable the C.A.A. to get on with the job quickly.
That Authority, which was needed many years ago, should not be finding this guidance in any way inhibiting.
I join other hon. Members in saying how delighted I am to know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) will be in the chair of the Authority. He faces a tremendous challenge. I draw his attention to Clause 3(l)(b) and (c) of the Civil Aviation Act, 1971. There are set out the needs of British civil air transport—that we should encourage the industry. It is the word "encouragement" that I hope will be my right hon. Friend's watchword. It is our duty not to restrict but to recognise. The opportunity and the demand are alike enormous and the competition which we face should not be, as hon. Members opposite seek to make it, between one side of the Chamber and the other; it should be a competition that we carry right across the battle with other world airlines.

8.59 p.m.

Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones: I wish the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carptener) well in the difficult task that he is about to undertake. The House will miss him. If he tries to reconcile this guidance policy with the Committee debates on the Bill, he will find substantial differences


Knowing his strict adherence to our constitutional procedures, I know that he will have regard to those debates.
It is regrettable that paragraph 17 should be in the guidance. Its provisions would have been better covered by the British Caledonian (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, because that is all that paragraph 17 is concerned with. It legalises highway robbery. The Minister told us on the Floor of the House and time and time again in Standing Committee that this was to be a once-for-all exercise and that there were no more route transfers to come. Yet we are back to Tops land. "Words shall mean what I want them to mean," says Topsy. The paragraph says that the Authority should bear in mind the need to give the airline adequate opportunities
during this airline's formative years.
One of the classic cases in economics is that protection shall be afforded to imports of infant industries in their formative years. Because they are infant industries they are protected. The trouble is that infant industries never grow up and they constantly need protection. Over and over again we shall have British Caledonian coming back with its begging bowl for more and more routes.
An hon. Member who spoke earlier hit the nail on the head when he said that British Caledonian will start operating the Atlantic route in the next 15 months to two years. That is precisely the time when this area is likely to become profitable again. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) was correct in saying that a decision on this matter should have been left to the C.A.A. Representations that I have received from my constituency show clearly that there is a desire that the routes which have been taken from our nationalised airlines should be given back in the certain event of a Labour Government.
We are on safer ground with paragraph 25, although I would warn the Chairman-elect of the C.A.A. of the importance of watching the evil effects of noise at night. We debated this matter last week. Tour operators are sending us propaganda with statements such as:
If you curtail night flying it is an unnecessary and arbitrary curtailment of flying which is an unnecessary and arbitrary curtailment of social freedom.

What about the people below? Are they not entitled to protection, freedom and rest? Freedom is not just freedom for tour operators to do what they wish.
One of the dilemmas facing the reputable charter companies and the nationalised carriers in this country is procurement of new aircraft. We would all like to see British technology preserved and as many as possible of the new aircraft containing as many British parts and as much British equipment as possible. It is regrettable that there is no provision for an extended version of the Lockheed TriStar which is being fitted with the Rolls-Royce RB211 engine. An extended version would make it so much easier to sell throughout the world. I hope that the Chairman designate of the C.A.A. will take to heart this part of the directive and make sure that aircraft noise is kept to a minimum by the use of advanced British technology and advanced British engines.
Paragraph 8 of the White Paper says that:
The Authority should aim to secure a high standard of aviation safety.
That is very desirable, and acceptable to all hon. Members. But paragraph 24, concerning air travel organisers, says that the Authority is restricted to the aviation side of the tour operator. The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames will have a major responsibility when he becomes the Chairman of the Authority. I sat on the Committee considering the Trade Descriptions Act, 1968. We thought then that we were giving massive protection to people taking holidays overseas. That was an illusion. Paragraph 15 of the 11th Report of the Air Transport Licensing Board for the year ending 31st March, 1971, pleads that too much pressure should not be exerted upon reputable airlines to reduce their price to such an extent that the profit margin is eliminated. Some of the tour operators have become so vast and so arrogant that they are now dictating to the airlines, both the independents and the nationalised airlines, and to overseas hotels, to such an extent that profit margins are being squeezed and squeezed. The airlines' profit margins may be squeezed so much that safety factors are neglected.
The Chairman-designate of the Authority has a major responsibility here. I commend to him the OFFICIAL REPORT


of the Committee stage of the Civil Aviation Bill, when the Minister for Trade made an admirable statement of what he would require of the Authority in the way of protection for holiday-makers. He said:
These two Amendments broaden the scope of the Clause so as to catch, in addition to travel organisers who act as principals—even though they may call themselves agents—the middle-men who are involved in arranging and wholesaling air travel by groups. They are often at the centre of the abuses that go on in this part of the business."—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 19th May, 1971; c. 447.]
The Minister intended the Act to provide the necessary powers of protection for the Authority to stamp out the worst abuses now being carried out by the arrogant, monopolistic tour operators. Since the Trade Descriptions Act cannot give that protection, we rely on the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames to give it. There is not quite the strength in the guidance that I should like to see, but if the right hon. Gentleman refers to the Committee stage he will realise that his right hon. Friend clearly intended that full protection should be given.
I deplore the fact that paragraph 17 is really the "British Caledonian (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill". I urge the right hon. Gentleman to take environmental and noise factors into account. Above all, since no one else has referred to this aspect, I urge him to use all the power he possesses to ensure that tour operators combine quality and safety, because he has control over the flying section.

9.10 p.m.

Mr. Robert Adley: As I shall have to curtail my remarks, I shall not follow the hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) too far, except to note that he has joined the bandwagon of the anti-British Caledonian brigade.

Mr. Carter-Jones: I was always in it.

Mr. Adley: I have a picture in my mind of the anti-British Caledonian lobby perhaps in 50 years' time coming to power seeking to eliminate British Caledonian from existence and being faced with a work-in by the employees. I am sorry to mention his name in his absence, but one wonders, for example,

what the attitude of the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Russell Kerr) would be in such a situation. In all the anti-British Caledonian remarks we have heard tonight, not a single hon. Member opposite has seen fit to mention the considerable number of people who work for it, who like working for it and to whom British Caledonian is providing security of employment. Furthermore it is possible for the airline to continue to grow whilst B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. also continue to grow and continue to do the first class job they have been doing for many years.
The guidance document is, as the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), said a vast regulatory document covering all aspects of civil aviation policy. I shall not concentrate on paragraph 17 because it has been well done over today. I want to take a brief look at paragraph 1, which contains the words:
advising on the provision of aerodromes
and paragraph 4, which begins:
In framing the guidance it has been the Government's aim to leave the Authority a wide measure of discretion.
The discretion I would like to see the Authority taking up is the discretion to become involved in aspects of civil aviation policy which are perhaps not detailed in the document, because there are many areas of civil aviation policy where Government involvement and activity are now the order of the day. The development of new aircraft and the planning and construction of new airports outlast the lifetime of any one Government. If the main task of the Authority is to be that of consultation, one of its main tasks should be wherever possible to try to secure some identity of policy between both sides of the political fence. Unless we can do that, it will be very difficult to have a coherent civil aviation policy in the years ahead.
There is also reference to public need and the vital rôle this has to play. It is no longer just an elite few who fly, but a large number of people. Although, as the hon. Member for Eccles rightly points out, we must protect from the scourge of noise all those who live near airports, we should also remember that many millions now enjoy overseas holidays and fly in aircraft, and that civil aviation is no longer a luxury industry. Thus, millions of people are involved in civil aviation


decisions, such as the provision of airports, and no doubt Sir Peter Masefield's words will be borne in mind by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter). Sir Peter was very concerned indeed about the effects of the Foulness Airport decision. I have not time to make all the observations that I intended to make, but I want to say that since 1968 there has been a considerable change in the circumstances in which the Foulness decision was taken. This concerns particularly the Government's commitment to proceed with the Channel Tunnel.
I believe that the Channel Tunnel and the Advanced Passenger Train will have a substantial effect on civil aviation, and I ask my right hon. Friend to ensure that his brief about consultation goes wider than that mentioned in the document, because 24 per cent. of the flights from Heathrow are less than 300 miles and when the Advanced Passenger Trains begin to operate through the Channel Tunnel it is likely that most of those flights will cease to serve any useful social or economic purpose. The electrification of the London Midland main line to Manchester has knocked B.E.A. to the tune of £10½ million on its London-Manchester service. My second plea to my right hon. Friend, therefore, is that consultation should not be concerned only with what appear to be aspects of civil aviation.
I am conscious of the time, and I close by echoing the words of a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House and wish good luck to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames. He will have his hands full, but I am confident that he will have his eyes wide open to the problems and the potential of the British civil aviation industry.

9.17 p.m.

Mr. Bruce Millan: This is an important debate although, unfortunately, not as well attended as it might have been. We are seeing the establishment of the Civil Aviation Authority, with a wide range of powers over the whole of civil aviation, and tonight we are discussing the general guidance on the basis of which it will operate its extensive powers.
I know that it is the wish of hon. Members on both sides of the House that the

Authority should have a successful start and a successful existence. In particular, I should like to add my own congratulations and good wishes to those already expressed to the Chairman of the Authority—the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter).
Much of the debate has been taken up with the second independent force and the rôle laid down for British Caledonian. However, there are many other matters in the White Paper and I should like first to mention one or two of those. Apart from British Caledonian, about which, unfortunately, the White Paper is far too precise from our point of view, much of the rest of the White Paper is vague and imprecise—an expression of good intentions, no doubt important but platitudinous sentiments about various issues with which the Authority will be dealing.
In drafting a White Paper of this sort it is difficult to get the right balance between putting in too much, and therefore appearing to tie the hands of the Authority before it has even started its work, and putting in too little, and thus producing, as is produced here in a number of paragraphs, sentiments expressed in such general terms that they are virtually meaningless.
I mention one or two points that I consider important. I hope that the Authority will give considerable and early attention to the problems that it will inherit. First, there is the question of the whole development of regional services, which my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) mentioned earlier, and there is the particular problem of the Highlands and Islands service. The right hon. Gentleman will remember that we discussed that service particularly, at considerable length, on a new Clause that I tabled in Committee on the Civil Aviation Bill. It is singled out for special mention here. The right hon. Gentleman knows the view that I take strongly—that these services are essential to the areas concerned. It is also my view that the cleanest way of dealing with them—and the method which the Labour Government, in their White Paper, said they wanted to adopt but which the present Government have not adopted—is to apply a straight subsidy to the airline responsible, namely, B.E.A., for the maintenance of these services, to be done


on a basis which does not involve the extravagant expenditure of public money but recognises that these services are virtually impossible to run on an economic basis.
The Government have not adopted that solution, but I tell the right hon. Gentleman and the Authority that those of us with particular interests in the Scottish Highlands and Islands will look carefully at what they do and shall certainly want to see that anything that they do contributes to the maintenance of these essential services in that part of the country.
On the question of consultation, it seems that paragraph 28 is not only the briefest paragraph, as the right hon. Gentleman said, but is also the vaguest. We hope that the new Authority will interpret that paragraph in the strongest and not the weakest way. It is possible to interpret it in virtually any way that the Authority wishes, but I hope that it will keep in mind the considerable importance of developing consultative arrangements over the whole range of the Authority's responsibilities.
As for the financial obligations in paragraph 29, in spite of what the right hon. Gentleman said, there is still a considerable vagueness in trying to estimate exactly how the finances of the Authority will work out. The only point here is that as a large part of the charges that it will have to levy will be paid for by British airlines it is very important, while recognising the need to recover from the travelling public as much as possible of the cost of these very expensive services, to recognise that it would not be desirable from the point of view of the development of civil aviation in Britain to impose on our national airlines burdens far beyond the kind of burdens that their competitors bear in other countries. I hope that in the development of the financial policy that principle will be kept very much in mind.
I turn to the question of the second independent force, which has been the matter most thoroughly discussed this evening. That follows from the considerable discussion that we had on this matter during the passage of the Civil Aviation Bill and, indeed, before then. I do not intend to go over the whole of the arguments,

and what was said in the Edwards Report, in the Labour Government White Paper, and so on, because those arguments were thoroughly rehearsed during the passage of that Bill. I simply point out that the Government cannot by any stretch of the imagination be taken to be following the policy laid down by the Labour Government in the White Paper of 1969. I must put that on record, without arguing the matter in detail. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have argued it on a number of occasions, and it would hardly be necessary to mention it except that the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) tried to pretend that my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) was saying things now which were incompatible and inconsistent with what he said when he was the Minister responsible. In any case, even if there were a certain inconsistency, it would not necessarily be a criticism, because today the situation—particularly the financial situation—of B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. is entirely different from what is was in 1969 and 1970.
Even before the Act came into operation there had been substantial transfers of routes from B.O.A.C. to British Caledonian, and such as the West African routes and the London—Tripoli routes. The Gatwick—Le Bourget route was transferred from B.E.A., and the restrictions on the East African first-class traffic of British Caledonian were lifted. These transfers, which were straight transfers from the nationalised airlines to an independent company, have already cost the nationalised airlines considerable sums—and that means, at the end of the day, the British taxpayer. Sums like £6 million have been mentioned. In the case of the West African routes alone, B.O.A.C.'s loss over a year is about £1½ million—this at a time when B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. are finding it very difficult to meet the financial obligations which the Government and Parliament have laid on them.
We vigorously opposed Clause 3 of the Bill before it became an Act, because it seemed to us that it gave legislative preference to British Caledonian at the expense of B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. Everything said during the passage of the legislation, and particularly what we read in the White Paper, simply confirms our fear that this represented a massive preference for British Caledonian over the


nationalised airlines. In the conditions of world civil aviation as we know them at present it is very difficult to maintain a case for building up a second independent force, unless it is done, as it is bound to be done—and we are vigorously opposed to this—at the expense of the nationalised airlines.
The White Paper confirms and emphasises the fears that we had during the passage of the Civil Aviation Bill. First, there is no reassertion in the White Paper that the original transfers were made on a once-for-all basis. The right hon. Gentleman said today that the Government did not intend to make any further route transfers from B.O.A.C. to British Caledonian. That is obvious, because the Government's powers in this regard run out at the end of this month. But that does not answer the question. The White Paper does not prevent subsequent transfers, under the aegis of the Civil Aviation Authority, from the nationalised airlines to British Caledonian. That is what we are complaining about, and nothing said by the Government has answered that point.
The other point of particular importance concerns paragraph 17 of the White Paper, in which is laid out in the most explicit terms preference for British Caledonian not just over other independentairlines—there would be a certain amount of sense in that, although the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) has a point when he puts the case for the other independent airlines—but over all airlines, including nationalised airlines.

Mr. John Wilkinson: Should not the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the independent companies have a long history of being great innovators—for instance, British Air Ferries in respect of car cargo, Transmeridian for specialised air freight, and Laker in respect of wide-bodied airliners?

Mr. Millan: There have been innovations by the nationalised corporations as well, but that is off the point that I am making. Paragraph 17 contains a completely explicit and considerable preference for British Caledonian, with no regard to the financial consequences for B.E.A. and B.O.A.C. although there is admittedly one vague reference in the White Paper to the economies of airlines generally. Preference for British

Caledonian can only be at the expense of the nationalised airlines and can only prejudice the responsibility that the House lays on those airlines for a proper return on the national investment. That is the most unforgivable feature of the White Paper.
Apart from the White Paper, the Air Transport Licensing Board has recently made an extraordinary decision which it is arguable is incompatible in several respects with the White Paper. If so, it is all the more scandalous that the decision should have been taken by the A.T.L.B. so near to the end of its life and to the establishment of the Authority. I am afraid that the decision of the A.T.L.B. has been taken about the British Caledonian applications in anticipation of the White Paper and in the light of what the A.T.L.B. interpreted to be the guidance that the Government would give to the Authority, and that is explicitly said in the decision. If that is the position, the recent A.T.L.B. decision will start the new Authority on a lengthy process of giving preference to British Caledonian at the expense of the nationalised corporations. Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether he believes that the A.T.L.B. decision is in line with the White Paper?
It is scandalous that the decision should have been taken at all. The decision is for 15 years. That is a highly unusual procedure for the A.T.L.B. to adopt especially within a month of the establishment of the Authority. The Minister has power to stop these applications now and pass them on to the Authority, and he should do so.
There are some remarkable features about the decision of the A.T.L.B. Although several changes of circumstance are mentioned since 1968 when the previous British Caledonian application was turned down, the decision omits to mention the most substantial change of all—the present uneconomic nature of the North Atlantic routes. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley has already noted the figures given by Mr. Tillinghast, the Chief Executive of T.W.A., in a speech made a few days ago in New York, when he stated that the 19 I.A.T.A. airlines which operate across the Atlantic lost £112 million last year. Do the Government accept that as a correct figure? If that is not the correct


figure, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the correct figure is? I believe that those figures are correct. I have not seen them contradicted. In a situation in which routes are already overcrowded, where there is excess capacity, and where substantial losses are being made by airlines, it is monstrous to grant applications which can only worsen the position from the British point of view.
A number of my hon. Friends have suggested that British Caledonian hopes to make a quick killing in some of the applications that have been made for additional route licences. That may be true of the West African routes and in a number of other respects, but I doubt whether it is true of the North Atlantic routes. Indeed, the A.T.L.B., in its decision document, said that on the economics of the operation it doubted whether the figures advanced by British Caledonian would be justified.
During the proceedings on the Civil Aviation Bill there was a good deal of discussion about inadequacy of information—such as statistics—about the airline industry. We were given assurances that the new Authority would behave better in this regard and that in giving decisions the A.T.L.B. would give more information in substantiating applications. However, in the decision which the A.T.L.B. gave two or three weeks ago it did not mention the effects of any decision on B.O.A.C. finances. Indeed, that factor does not even seem to have been considered in the A.T.L.B. conclusion. We know that B.O.A.C.'s group profit in 1970 was £19 million, that in 1971 it fell to £3 million, and that in 1972 it will be extremely difficult for B.O.A.C. to produce any profit at all. The loss of traffic that is bound to be involved in the British Caledonian licences will make it difficult for B.O.A.C. to make any kind of financial return on what the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East called the national assets which it is operating on our behalf.
There is another rather odd feature of the A.T.L.B. decision. In paragraph 25 of its statement it said:
We might well have been influenced by the reflection that this policy"—
that is, the policy of giving routes to British Caledonian—
might lead to financial support by the Government in case of need.

It then went on to say that it set aside that reflection. It is extraordinary that the board should have even mentioned that matter. Did the Government give guidance to the board that in certain circumstances financial assistance would be available for British Caledonian, or is this simply something said by the board out of the blue? I can hardly believe that it would have included that kind of sentence unless some kind of hint about financial assistance were given. I hope that the Minister will clear up that point in his reply.
One of the dangers in the Government's policy is that it might lead to a situation in which British Caledonian is over-committed and becomes unable to meet its financial obligations. In that situation the Government would face the problem either of reversing their policy altogether by allowing British Caledonian to go out of the picture, or of having to give additional preference to British Caledonian to keep the second independent force going.
In one sense British Caledonian is potentially an airline that will make substantial profits out of the public purse but, equally dangerously, we may have in British Caledonian a potential lame duck facing the Government with the problem that I have just outlined. In that situation we shall have the unedifying experience of having, in one way or another, financial help being given to the independent airline at the expense of nationalised airlines on a scale not even envisaged now.
The only possible reason one can see for the policy adopted by the Government during the passage of the Bill to the Statute Book—a policy that they are now re-emphasising—is prejudice against the nationalised airlines and against their work which amounts almost to the destruction of national assets. That is why we have said, and why we repeat today, that the next Labour Government will reverse that policy. That is also why we shall vote against the White Paper.

9.40 p.m.

Mr. Noble: I agree that the—

Mr. Loughlin: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister has already addressed the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. I should rather have thought that an hon. Member of the standing and knowledge of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) would know perfectly well that any hon. or right hon. Member in charge of a substantive Motion does not require permission of the House to speak a second time.

Mr. Loughlin: There have been a number of occasions when right hon. Gentlemen who have been in control of substantive issues have prefaced their remarks by asking leave of the House to speak again.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That may well be so. There are some hon. Members who do not have the advantage of the knowledge which I take the hon. Gentleman, from my experience of him, to have. I am rather surprised that he should say that.

Mr. Loughlin: I am very sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You may flatter me, but you may guide me also. I do not know any procedure in the House which gives the right hon. Gentleman, having spoken once in this debate—and, after all, we are not debating a Statutory Instrument—the right to address the House again without leave of the House. You may be able to tell me of the Standing Order relating to this situation, but as far as I know the Standing Orders it is incumbent on the right hon. Gentleman to ask leave to address the House a second time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman will read again that page which he knows so well—page 409 of "Erskine May"—he will see that for once his memory is slightly at fault.

Mr. Loughlin: Mr. Loughlin rose—

Hon. Members: Oh, no.

Mr. Loughlin: I am perfectly entitled to put a point of order. It is now a quarter to ten, which is not excessively late. May I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, at what time this debate finishes? It may well finish at ten o'clock, but it could finish at 11.30. If it finishes at 11.30 and the right hon. Gentleman has an automatic right to address the House a second time, it might be of advantage to the House for those who

wish to contribute to the debate to be heard before the right hon. Gentleman. May we know the position?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The position is covered by the tradition of the House, which is that when a Front Bencher rises to speak it is normal for the Chair to call him at that time. When the hon. Gentleman the Member for Glasgow, Craigton, (Mr. Millan) rose, I could have called several hon. Members to speak at that time. I do not think that the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West was in the Chamber at the time: those hon. Members were, and had been there all the time. I had to disappoint them because there had been an agreement for this debate to end at about ten o'clock. So the hon. Gentleman rose, and I called him, as was proper. I then called the right hon. Gentleman the Minister, and that is quite correct, too. The right hon. Gentleman needs no permission from anyone to speak.

Mr. Loughlin: Further to that point of order—

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Loughlin: Hon. Members opposite must realise that this is a legitimate issue involving the procedures of this House. Unless hon. Members accept that, they are approaching the Reichstag rather than our democratic Parliament. May I take it, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that under the procedures of this House this debate can continue until half past eleven—

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: Yes.

Mr. Loughlin: I do not need tuition from the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis). We have a situation where we are debating two issues. We are debating the guidance which has been given to the Civil Aviation Authority. Incorporated with it are a number of Statutory Instruments. I conclude from that that it is within the procedures of this House that this debate should continue for one and a half hours after ten o'clock—[Interruption.] Shut up, you fool—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West will not address the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) like that. I


hope the hon. Gentleman will remember that he is addressing a point of order to me.

Mr. Loughlin: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Of course, I would not dream of calling you a fool. However, when I hear a steady stream of remarks by the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford from a sedentary position, with respect, it is your duty to restrain him. If I made a remark from a sedentary position, you would have no hesitation in restraining me. Your responsibility—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This will not do at all, and the hon. Gentleman knows it. He is casting aspersions on the Chair and the Chair's impartiality. I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman really means to do that. Furthermore, I will tell him now that he may speak until half-past eleven himself if he wishes once the Minister has drawn his remarks to a conclusion. If the hon. Gentleman does so, of course, he will have to take whatever consequences his colleagues like to mete out to him. That has nothing to do with me. I have called the Minister. I find no point of order to answer. I order the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West to resume his seat.

Mr. Loughlin: Mr. Loughlin rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I order the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat.

Mr. Loughlin: On a point of order—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I will not hear further points of order on this point.

Mr. Loughlin: Mr. Loughlin rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Unless the hon. Gentleman resumes his seat immediately, I shall give him an official warning.

Mr. Loughlin: On a point of order. I reserve my right—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman will resume his seat. Let me make it clear to him that I will not hear any more points of order on this point. I have told him that the right hon. Gentleman whom I have called has the right of reply. When the right hon. Gentleman has concluded his remarks, if we have not reached half-past eleven and the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West rises I shall call him.

Mr. Loughlin: On a point of order—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I will not hear—

Mr. Loughlin: I do not give a damn whether you will or will not—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I name Mr. Loughlin, the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West.

Mr. Loughlin: I am entitled to put a point of order—[Interruption.] Only the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker can determine whether it is in order. Even so, it cannot be determined before I have put my point of order. My point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is this. You chose to rebuke me for dealing with the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford as I did. My criticism of the Chair, which you said was a criticism of the Chair, was not intended to be—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Leader of the House.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. William Whitelaw): In accordance with precedent and following your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I beg to move,
That Mr. Charles Loughlin be suspended from the service of the House.

Question put:

The House divided: Ayes 299, Noes 220.

Bowden, Andrew
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Haselhurst, Alan
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.


Brains, Bernard
Havers, Michael
Mudd, David


Bray, Ronald
Hawkins, Paul
Murton, Oscar


Brewis, John
Hay, John
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Hayhoe, Barney
Neave, Airey


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Heseltine, Michael
Nicholls, Sir Harmar


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hicks, Robert
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hiley, Joseph
Normanton, Tom


Bryan, Paul
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Buck, Antony
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Onslow, Cranley


Bullus, Sir Eric
Holland, Philip
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Burden, F. A.
Holt, Miss Mary
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Hooson, Emlyn
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Campbell, Rt.Hn.G.(Moray&amp;Nairn)
Hordern, Peter
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Carlisle, Mark
Hornby, Richard
Pardoe, John


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Hornsby-Smith,Rt.Hn.Dame Patricia
Parkinson, Cecil


Chapman, Sydney
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Peel, John


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Howell, David (Guildford)
Percival, Ian


Chichester-Clark, R.
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Peyton, Rt. Hn. John


Churchill, W. S.
Hunt, John
Pink, R. Bonner


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Pounder, Rafton


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Iremonger, T. L.
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Cockeram, Eric
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Cooke, Robert
James, David
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Coombs, Derek
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Cordle, John
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Jessel, Toby
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Cormack, Patrick
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Raison, Timothy


Costain, A. P.
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Critchley, Julian
Jopling, Michael
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter




Redmond, Robert


Crouch, David
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Crowder, F. P.
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Curran, Charles
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Rees-Davies, W. R.


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid,Maj.-Gen. James
Kershaw, Anthony
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Dean, Paul
Kilfedder, James
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Kimball, Marcus
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Digby, Simon Wingfield
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Ridsdale, Julian


Dixon, Piers
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Dykes, Hugh
Kinsey, J. R.
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff. N.)


Eden, Sir John
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Knox, David
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Lambton, Lord
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Elliott, R. W. (N'ctle-upon-Tyne,N.)
Lane, David
Rost, Peter


Eyre, Reginald
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Royle, Anthony


Farr, John
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Russell, Sir Ronald


Fell, Anthony
Le Marchant, Spencer
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Scott, Nicholas


Fidler, Michael
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
Scott-Hopkins, James


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Longden, Gilbert
Sharples, Richard


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Loveridge, John
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Luce, R. N.
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Fookes, Miss Janet
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Simeons, Charles


Fortescue, Tim
MacArthur, Ian
Skeet, T. H. H.


Foster, Sir John
McCrindle, R. A.
Smith, Dudley (W'wick &amp; L'mington)


Fowler, Norman
McLaren, Martin
Soref, Harold


Fox, Marcus
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Speed, Keith


Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford &amp; Stone)
McMaster, Stanley
Spence, John


Fry, Peter
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Sproat, Iain


Galbraith, Hn. T. G
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Stainton, Keith


Gardner, Edward
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)
Stanbrook, Ivor


Gibson-Watt, David
Maddan, Martin
Steel, David


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Madel, David
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Maginnis, John E.
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Glyn, Dr. Alan
Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Marten, Neil
Stokes, John


Goodhart, Philip
Mather, Carol
Stuttaford, Dr. Tom


Goodhew, Victor
Maude, Angus
Sutcliffe, John


Gorst, John
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Tapsell, Peter


Gower, Raymond
Mawby, Ray
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)



Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Taylor,Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)


Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Green, Alan
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)


Grieve, Percy
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Tebbit, Norman


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Miscampbell, Norman
Temple, John M.


Grylls, Michael
Mitchell,Lt.-Col.C.(Aberdeenshire,W)
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret


Gummer, Selwyn
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Thomas. John Stradling (Monmouth)


Gurden, Harold
Moate, Roger
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Molyneaux, James
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Money, Ernle
Trew, Peter


Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Monks, Mrs. Connie
Tugendhat, Christopher


Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Monro Hector
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Hannam, John (Exeter)
Montgomery, Fergus
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
More, Jasper
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard







Waddington, David
Wells, John (Maidstone)
Woodnutt, Mark


Walder, David (Clitheroe)
White, Roger (Gravesend)
Worsley, Marcus


Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek
Wiggin, Jerry
Younger, Hn. George


Wall, Patrick
Wilkinson, John



Walters, Dennis
Winterton, Nicholas
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Ward, Dame Irene
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
Mr. Walter Clegg and


Warren, Kenneth
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard
Mr. Hamish Gray.


Weatherill, Bernard
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher





NOES


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Gilbert, Dr. John
Miller, Dr. M. S.


Allen, Scholefield
Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Milne, Edward


Armstrong, Ernest
Gourlay, Harry
Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton Itchen)


Ashley, Jack
Grant, George (Morpeth)
Molloy, William


Atkinson, Norman
Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)


Beaney, Alan
Hamling, William
Moyle, Roland


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Hardy, Peter
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Harper, Joseph
Murray, Ronald King


Bidwell, Sydney
Hattersley, Roy
Oakes, Gordon


Bishop, E. S.
Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Ogden, Eric


Booth, Albert
Heffer, Eric S.
O'Halloran, Michael


Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Hilton, W. S.
O'Malley, Brian


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Horam, John
Oram, Bert


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Huckfield, Leslie
Orbach, Maurice




Orme, Stanley


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Hughes, Rt. Hn.Cledwyn(Anglesey)
Oswald, Thomas


Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)


Buchan, Norman
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Padley, Walter


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Paget, R. T.


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Hunter, Adam
Palmer, Arthur


Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Irvine,Rt.Hn.SirArthur(Edge Hill)
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Janner, Greville
Pavitt, Laurie


Carmichael, Neil
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Pendry, Tom


Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Pentland, Norman


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Perry, Ernest G.


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
John, Brynmor
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Prescott, John


Cohen, Stanley
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Coleman, Donald
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Concannon, J. D.
Jones,Rt.Hn.Sir Elwyn (W.Ham,S.)
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Richard, Ivor


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Judd, Frank
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Cronin, John
Kaufman, Gerald
Roberts,Rt.Hn.Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Kelley, Richard
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br'c'n&amp;R'dnor)


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Kerr, Russell
Roper, John


Dalyell, Tam
Kinnock, Neil
Rose, Paul B.


Davidson, Arthur
Lambie, David
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Lamond, James
Sandelson, Neville


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Latham, Arthur
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)




Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Short, Rt.Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Deakins, Eric
Leonard, Dick
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton.N.E.)


Delargy, H. J.
Lestor, Miss Joan
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Dempsey, James
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Dormand, J. D.
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Sillars, James


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Lipton, Marcus
Silverman, Julius


Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Lomas, Kenneth
Skinner, Dennis


Driberg, Tom
Loughlin, Charles
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Spriggs, Leslie


Dunn, James A.
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Stallard, A. W.


Dunnett, Jack
McBride, Neil
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)


Eadie, Alex
McCann, John
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
McCartney, Hugh
Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John


Ellis, Tom
McElhone, Frank
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


English, Michael
McGuire, Michael
Swain, Thomas


Evans, Fred
Mackenzie, Gregor
Thomas,Rt.Hn.George (Cardiff,W.)


Ewing, Henry
Maclennan, Robert
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Faulds, Andrew
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Torney, Tom


Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
McNamara, J. Kevin
Tuck, Raphael


Fisher,Mrs.Doris(B'ham,Ladywood)
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Urwin, T. W.


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Varley, Eric G.


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Marks, Kenneth
Wainwright, Edwin


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Marquand, David
Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)


Foley, Maurice
Marsden, F.
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Foot, Michael
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Wallace, George


Forrester, John
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Watkins, David


Fraser, John (Norwood)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Weitzman, David


Freeson, Reginald
Mendelson, John
Wellbeloved, James


Garrett, W. E.
Millan, Bruce
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)







White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Whitehead, Phillip
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)
Mr. John Golding and


Whitlock, William
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)
Mr. James Hamilton


Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Woof, Robert

Question accordingly agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have to direct the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West to withdraw from the House, in accordance with the decision which the House has just made.

The hon. Member withdrew accordingly.

It being after Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That the Deposit of Poisonous Waste Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Pym.]

CIVIL AVIATION

Question again proposed.

Mr. Mason: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Although the suspension Division may have interfered with business, am I not right in assuming that the Minister should now wind up the debate and that the debate should be concluded by a Division, if we wish it?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct.

Mr. Noble: We had—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I hope hon. Members will allow the Minister to make his speech by leaving the House as quietly as possible.

Mr. Noble: We had, in a rather less crowded House, an exceedingly useful debate which was perhaps interesting and unusual in one particular regard, namely, that while a good deal of the discussion was apparently directed at the Minister it was quite clear that many speakers intended to get a point across to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) who will take over the chairmanship of the Civil Aviation Authority in a few weeks' time. I am certain that he profited a good deal from the advice that was offered to him during the course of the debate.
I would like to say a word of thanks to the Air Registration Board and the

A.T.L.B., which will cease to exist in their old form at the end of this month, for the considerable work that they have done for the country. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan), in his winding-up speech, said very fairly that he realised that it was difficult to produce a document of guidance because a balance had to be attained between saying too much, which would unnecessarily tie the C.A.A.'s hands, and saying too little, in which case the comments might appear to be rather platitudinous. He and I agree that we are aiming to give the Authority the maximum flexibility, and on behalf of the Government I have said that we will support it where we can.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Craigton asked me to bear in mind the point about the Highlands and Islands. I have discussed this with the Chairman-designate, and I can assure the hon. Member that my right hon. Friend thinks that within the period we have given him he will be able to produce a useful report on which we can take advice.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the finances, a point raised by several other hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings (Mr. Warren), who spoke about the importance, when we are imposing air navigation charges on the airlines, of trying to obtain agreement in I.A.T.A. so that we obtain our share of the charges from the foreign airlines as well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Adley) rightly referred to the number of people who are now working for British Caledonian and are very happy to be doing that. We should bear that in mind as well as the criticisms which were only too freely hurled around in the debate. My hon. Friend also pointed out that the electrification of the Manchester-London railway line had cost B.E.A. £10½ million. As the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) kept talking about what British Caledonian had "cost" B.E.A. and B.O.A.C, it is interesting that that action by British Rail cost considerably more than any of the figures he gave.
I am sorry I missed the beginning of the speech of the hon. Member for Eccles


(Mr. Carter-Jones), but I have a note of it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames will have noted his points about the air travel organisers, on which he knows I agree with him very much.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings did not altogether approve of the charter warfare I was carrying on. I am sorry, but a number of companies built up considerable charter businesses, and they have expanded considerably recently by flouting the international laws and our national laws on charter competition. The war was, therefore, in my view right and essential, but I do not intend to damage the chances of British aviation, either independent or in the public sector.
One point I would make to the Opposition, when they are continually telling me how much damage I am causing to B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. by allowing in a second force airline, is that I have at the same time made considerable concessions to both nationalised airlines to carry on charter businesses and take part in other operations which they said they needed, and I agreed, to meet the competition of foreign airlines.
The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) spoke about the regional problems. He hoped that the perhaps not too carefully defined part in paragraphs 20 and 21 would give the Civil Aviation Authority a sufficiently free hand, and I think it does.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) was worried lest we had crossed too many "ts" in the guidance. That is a question of balance, but I believe we have given the Authority enough flexibility. We circulated the appropriate bits of the guidance to all the people immediately affected and they told us any points they felt we could change. On the whole, there was a very wide degree of agreement.
My hon. Friend asked whether we believe in more competition. Yes, we do. But, because this is an international type of co-operation, the competition has to be fair, and one that will bring

Division No. 83
AYES
[10.20 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
Atkins, Humphrey


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Awdry, Daniel


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Astor, John
Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)

a larger measure of the travelling public into British airlines and not drive them into using overseas airlines. I disagree with my hon. Friend's analysis of what is likely to happen on the North Atlantic charters. I also agree that we should ask my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames to look carefully at the noise problem. Paragraph 25 gives him the necessary power to do so and to give advice which I am sure the Government will heed. I confess that I am slightly relieved that at least some of the enormous amount of mail which has come to me weekly about the noise problem may now be diverted to another channel for a while.

The main theme of the debate has come back over and over again to the second force, the transferred routes, and the preferences which the guidance offers. I have heard the same speeches from hon. Members opposite time and again and I have put our case time and again. I now simply say, therefore, that we are following the policy recommended by Edwards, which was laid down by the Labour Government and which we have taken up with one important difference, in that the Labour Government would not have given the second force any method by which it could have established itself. We did not believe that one could set up the second force and not give it any of the resources needed to become viable. So we have changed the Labour Government's policy, and we are not ashamed of it.

To try to suggest, as the Opposition have done today, that there has been some curious change because we have introduced preferences as a new item in the guidance, is asking me to believe too much, because the preferences were clearly stated in the Civil Aviation Act and during the debates that we had on the Act. For that reason, I feel that I am unlikely to be able to convince hon. Members opposite and I do not believe that they will easily convince me. I feel that the debate has been useful and perhaps it may now reasonably reach a conclusion.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 305, Noes 268.

Balniel, Lord
Glyn, Dr. Alan
Mawby, Ray


Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Batsford, Brian
Goodhart, Philip
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Goodhew, Victor
Mills, Peter (Torrington)


Bell, Ronald
Gorst, John
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Gower, Raymond
Miscampbell, Norman


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Mitchell,Lt.-Col.C.(Aberdeenshire,W)


Benyon, W.
Green Alan
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Grieve, Percy
Moate, Roger


Biffen, John
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Molyneaux, James


Biggs-Davison, John
Grylls, Michael
Money, Ernle


Blaker, Peter
Gummer, Selwyn
Monks, Mrs. Connie


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Gurden, Harold
Monro, Hector


Body, Richard
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Montgomery, Fergus


Boscawen, Robert
Hall, John (Wycombe)
More, Jasper


Bossom, Sir Clive
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)


Bowden, Andrew
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.


Braine, Bernard
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Morrison, Charles


Bray, Ronald
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Mudd, David


Brewis, John
Haselhurst, Alan
Murton, Oscar


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Havers, Michael
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Hawkins, Paul
Neave, Airey


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hay, John
Nicholls, Sir Harmar


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hayhoe, Barney
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Bryan, Paul
Heseltine, Michael
Normanton, Tom


Buchanan-Smith, Alick(Angus,N&amp;M)
Hicks, Robert
Onslow, Cranley


Buck, Antony
Hiley, Joseph
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Bullus, Sir Eric
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Burden, F. A.
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Osborn, John


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Holland, Philip
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Campbell, Rt.Hn.G.(Moray&amp;Nairn)
Holt, Miss Mary
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Carlisle, Mark
Hooson, Emlyn
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Hordern, Peter
Pardoe, John


Channon, Paul
Hornby, Richard
Parkinson, Cecil


Chapman, Sydney
Hornsby-Smith,Rt.Hn.Dame Patricia
Peel, John


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Percival, Ian


Chichester-Clark, R.
Howell, David (Guildford)
Peyton, Rt. Hn. John


Churchill, W. S.
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Pink, R. Bonner


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Hunt, John
Pounder, Rafton


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Clegg, Walter
Iremonger, T. L.
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Cockeram, Eric
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Cooke, Robert
James, David
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Coombs, Derek
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Cordle, John
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Jessel, Toby
Raison, Timothy


Cormack, Patrick
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Costain, A. P.
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter


Critchley, Julian
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Redmond, Robert


Crouch, David
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Crowder, F. P.
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Curran, Charles
Kershaw, Anthony
Rees-Davies, W. R.


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid,Maj.-Gen.James
Kilfedder, James
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Dean, Paul
Kimball, Marcus
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Digby, Simon Wingfield
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Ridsdale, Julian


Dixon, Piers
Kinsey, J. R.
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Knox, David
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Dykes, Hugh
Lambton, Lord
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)


Eden, Sir John
Lane, David
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Rost, Peter


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Royle, Anthony


Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-uponTyne,N.)
Le Merchant, Spencer
Russell, Sir Ronald


Emery, Peter
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Eyre, Reginald
Longden, Gilbert
Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.


Farr, John
Loveridge, John
Scott, Nicholas


Fell, Anthony
Luce, R. N.
Scott-Hopkins, James


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Sharples, Richard


Fidler, Michael
MacArthur, Ian
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
McCrindle, R. A.
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
McLaren, Martin
Simeons, Charles


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Skeet, T. H. H.


Fookes, Miss Janet
McMaster, Stanley
Smith, Dudley (W'wick &amp; L'mington)


Fortescue, Tim
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Soref, Harold


Foster, Sir John
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Speed, Keith


Fowler, Norman
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)
Spence, John


Fox, Marcus
Maddan, Martin
Sproat, Iain


Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(Stfford &amp; Stone)
Madel, David
Stainton, Keith


Fry, Peter
Maginnis, John E.
Stanbrook, Ivor


Galbraith, Hn. T. G
Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest
Steel, David


Gardner, Edward
Marten, Neil
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Gibson-Watt, David,
Mather, Carol
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Maude, Angus
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Stokes, John







Stuttaford, Dr. Tom
Tugendhat, Christopher
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Sutcliffe, John
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin
Wiggin, Jerry


Tapsell, Peter
van Straubenzee, W. R.
Wilkinson, John


Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard
Winterton, Nicholas


Taylor,Edward M. (G'gow,Cathcart)
Waddington, David
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Walder, David (Clitheroe)
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)
Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Tebbit, Norman
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek
Woodnutt, Mark


Temple, John M.
Wall, Patrick
Worsley, Marcus


Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret
Walters, Dennis
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)
Ward, Dame Irene
Younger, Hn. George


Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)
Warren, Kenneth



Tilney, John
Weatherill, Bernard
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Trafford, Dr. Anthony
Wells, John (Maldstone)
Mr. Michael Joplin and


Trew, Peter
White, Roger (Gravesend)
Mr. Hamish Gray




NOES


Abse, Leo
Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)


Albu, Austen
Driberg, Tom
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Duffy, A. E. P.
Judd, Frank


Allen, Scholefield
Dunn, James A.
Kaufman, Gerald


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Dunnett, Jack
Kelley, Richard


Armstrong, Ernest
Eadie, Alex
Kerr, Russell


Ashley, Jack
Edelman, Maurice
Kinnock, Neil


Atkinson, Norman
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lambie, David


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Lamond, James


Barnes, Michael
Ellis, Tom
Latham, Arthur


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
English, Michael
Lawson, George


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Evans, Fred
Leadbitter, Ted


Baxter, William
Ewing, Harry
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Beaney, Alan
Faulds, Andrew
Leonard, Dick


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Lestor, Miss Joan


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham,Ladywood)
Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold


Bidwell, Sydney
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)


Bishop, E. S.
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Lipton, Marcus


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Foley, Maurice
Lomas, Kenneth


Booth, Albert
Foot, Michael
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)


Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Ford, Ben
Lyons, Edward (Bradford,E.)


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Forrester, John
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson


Bradley, Tom
Fraser, John (Norwood)
McBride, Neil


Broughton, Sir Alfred
Freeson, Reginald
McCann, John


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,W.)
Galpern, Sir Myer
McElhone, Frank


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Garrett, W. E.
McGuire, Michael


Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Gilbert, Dr. John
Mackenzie, Gregor


Buchan, Norman
Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Mackie, John


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. G.
Mackintosh, John P.


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Gourlay, Harry
Maclennan, Robert


Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Grant, George (Morpeth)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Grant, John D, (Islington E.)
McNamara, J. Kevin


Cant, R. B.
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)


Carmichael, Neil
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield. E.)


Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Marks, Kenneth


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Marquand, David


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Hamling, William
Marsden, F.


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)
Marshall, Dr. Edmund


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Hardy, Peter
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy


Cohen, Stanley
Harper, Joseph
Mayhew, Christopher


Coleman, Donald
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Meacher, Michael


Concannon, J. D.
Hattersley, Roy
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert


Conlan, Bernard
Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Mendelson, John


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Heffer, Eric S.
Millan, Bruce


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Horam, John
Miller, Dr. M. S.


Crawshaw, Richard
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Milne, Edward


Cronin, John
Huckfield, Leslie
Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Molloy, William


Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)


Cunningham, G. (Islington, S.W.)
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)


Dalyell, Tam
Hunter, Adam
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Irvine,Rt.Hn.SirArthur(Edge Hill)
Moyle, Roland


Davidson, Arthur
Janner, Greville
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Murray, Ronald King


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Oakes, Gordon


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Ogden, Eric


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
O'Halloran, Michael


Deakins, Eric
John, Brynmor
O'Malley, Brian


Delargy, Hugh (Thurrock)
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Oram, Bert


Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund
Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Orbach, Maurice


Dempsey, James
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Orme, Stanley


Doig, Peter
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Oswald, Thomas


Dormand, J. D.
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Jones,Rt.Hn.Sir Elwyn (W.Ham,S.)
Padley, Walter







Palmer, Arthur
Short,Rt.Hn.Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)
Tuck, Raphael


Panned, Rt. Hn. Charles
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N.E.)
Urwin, T. W.


Parker, John (Dagenham)
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Varley, Eric G.


Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Wainwright, Edwin


Pavitt, Laurie
Sillars, James
Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)


Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Silverman, Julius
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Pentland, Norman
Skinner, Dennis
Wallace, George


Perry, Ernest G.
Small, William
Watkins, David


Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)
Weitzman, David


Prescott, John
Spearing, Nigel
Wellbeloved, James


Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)




Probert, Arthur
Spriggs, Leslie
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Rankin, John
Stallard, A. W.
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Reed, D. (Sedgefield)
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)
Whitehead, Phillip


Rhodes, Geoffrey
Stoddart, David (Swindon)
Whitlock, William


Richard, Ivor
Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Strang, Gavin
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Roberts, Rt.Hn.Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br'c'n&amp;R'dnor)
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)
Swain, Thomas
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Roper, John
Thomas,Rt.Hn.George (Cardiff,W.)
Woof, Robert


Ross, Paul B.
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)



Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)
Tinn, James
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Sandelson, Neville
Tomney, Frank
Mr. John Golding


Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)
Torney, Tom
Mr. Tom Pendry.


Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved,

That the statement on Civil Aviation Policy Guidance given to the Civil Aviation Authority in pursuance of section 3(2) of the Civil Aviation Act 1971 with respect to the performance

of its functions, a draft of which was laid before this House on 23rd February, be approved in pursuance of section 3(3) of that Act.

Orders of the Day — DEPOSIT OF POISONOUS WASTE BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

10.30 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Peter Walker): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I should like to express my thanks to the Opposition for the manner in which, when I made my statement on the dumping of toxic wastes in Nuneaton, their representative kindly volunteered that the Opposition would co-operate in every way in ensuring that a Bill of this nature was passed increasing the penalties on, and bringing under the law the practices of, people disposing of dangerous wastes. I should like to give the background of the situation prior to the Opposition agreeing to enabling this legislation to be passed because there has recently been a certain amount of comment in the Press following the second Report of the Royal Commission on Pollution to the effect that there has been some lethargy about introducing such legislation.
In August, 1970, and April, 1971, we published the reports of the working parties which investigated the problems raised by toxic wastes, and the Government stated that it was their intention to introduce legislation to ensure that the new local authorities resulting from local government reform benefited from legislation along the lines suggested. I believe that there is general agreement between both sides of the House that it is important to ensure that refuse disposal and the disposal of poisonous wastes is carried out by the major local authorities and that this needs considerable capital investment and technical skills.
It was the Government's view that this should be the responsibility of the new counties set up as a result of local government reform. We felt that as the old districts were about to end their period of operating these functions it

might be a difficult time to put new duties on them. We therefore announced last April that, in our view, the changes in legislation should take place to coincide with the new functions of the new counties resulting from local government reform. No newspaper or political party was critical of that view.
Following that announcement, the Royal Commission contacted us in July, saying that it felt that to wait until April, 1974, might be too long to wait to deal with this problem and that it would welcome the possibility of tackling it sooner. Immediately on receiving that information, I pointed out the considerations of the Government and suggested to the Royal Commission that it should meet officials of my Department and a Minister from my Department to discuss the possibility of taking action before April, 1974, or the advantages and disadvantages of leaving it until that date. A meeting took place in November, and the Royal Commission expressed the view that, in spite of the difficulties of the old districts operating these functions, it was desirable to take action prior to that date.
We considered the Royal Commission's views, and a letter was sent to it in January, before all the major publicity on toxic wastes, saying that, having had the discussion with it, we agreed with its view and that, as a result, we would prepare legislation for incorporation in the Local Government Bill to enable these functions to be handed immediately to the existing districts. My Department then prepared the appropriate new Clauses which would have to be added to the Bill.
When I made my statement on the Nuneaton affair the Opposition kindly suggested that they would help a special Bill. I was anxious to take advantage of this because it would mean that the Bill would reach the Statute Book before the local government proposals. I therefore welcome the basic unity of the House. A Measure such as this completely cuts across party boundaries, and I express my appreciation that the Opposition should have made available the opportunity of bringing this legislation into force in virtually a matter of days or weeks.
Dumping is a problem which has confronted us for a considerable time. Much


of the recent Press publicity has been concerned with cyanide and other chemicals which have been dumped over the years. I hope the public will realise that the stiffer penalties which we are introducing will apply from the time the Bill becomes an Act. Anyone who knows of dangerous products having been dumped in past years should immediately inform either the local authority or the police so that the dumping can be properly investigated and appropriate action taken. In that event we cannot enforce the penalties contained in the Bill, but we shall be able to take action to treat the chemicals if they are a threat to the welfare of the public or animals or to the water supplies.
I will not attempt to deal with all the provisions of the Bill, but I will draw attention to some of the more important ones. I will deal first with the nature of the new offences and the penalties. The offences outlined in the first three subsections of Clause 1 relate to depositing on land, or causing or permitting to be deposited on land, poisonous, noxious or polluting wastes in such circumstances as to cause material risk of death, injury or impairment of health to persons or animals, or so as to threaten the pollution of any surface or underground water supply. I cannot, of course, guarantee that these provisions will prove to be beyond argument, but their intention is clear.
About the penalties set out in Clause 1(5) there is no doubt—on summary conviction a fine of up to £400 and up to six months' imprisonment, or both; and on conviction on indictment up to five years' imprisonment or an unlimited fine or both. One of the criticisms of legislation on which public authorities have had to rely in this field in the past has been the inadequacy of the maximum penalties, and the Bill puts this matter right.
In creating the offences which I have mentioned the Bill provides in Clause 1(4) that in assessing the degree of risk caused by an alleged offence regard shall be had to any measures taken to minimise the risk and the likelihood of waste being tampered with by children. Subsection (6) introduces statutory defences for those who dump wastes on instructions from employers or relying in good faith on information given to them by

others and for anyone who has taken all reasonable steps to ensure that no offence would be committed.
I hope that these provisions will reassure hon. Members who fear that we are introducing measures which are out of keeping with the needs of the situation. I hope also that those who fear that the Bill may let real culprits through its net will be reassured when I tell them that employers who "cause or permit" wastes to be deposited in contravention of the Bill will be liable to the penalties I have mentioned.

Mr. Kenneth Marks: One of the problems in bringing prosecutions against illegal tipping is that witnesses can often identify a vehicle, its number and the firm owning it, but they cannot identify the driver, because the illegal tipping usually takes place at night. Does the Bill cover that difficulty?

Mr. Walker: In such circumstances the firm would be identified, and the directors and secretary of the company would be very much involved. They would know the person driving the vehicle and would also know whether he was aware of the nature of the load. I want to avoid the situation where a driver who is unaware of the dangers of his load is prosecuted; the people who should be prosecuted are his employers who gave him the instructions.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that most of the difficulty is caused by fly tippers, who operate without road tax, vehicle registration, or anything else. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken about the public informing the police. I have informed the police on many occasions about things of this sort, and the police have told me they cannot do anything about it because it is so prevalent. What happens if the police refuse to take action?

Mr. Walker: I shall be dealing with this matter on later provisions, but I can say that it will be illegal to move loads of a dangerous type and without having previously informed the appropriate authorities three days previously. Vehicles carrying such loads, even if not caught tipping, will be taken as committing a serious offence under the provisions of the Bill. I am anxious that there should


be the maximum number of apprehensions of criminals under the Bill, and I hope that this will come about by means of these much more severe penalties. It may be that because in the past the penalties were only at a maximum of £100, the police have not brought prosecutions against fly tippers. The police may have felt that the penalty was hardly equivalent to the earnings of such an operator. However, it is to be hoped that in future the penalties will be of such proportions as to make this offence a very important crime indeed.
Clause 5 states specifically that where an offence committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance, or through any neglect, of a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer, he as well as the body corporate shall be liable to be proceeded against. Similarly, where the affairs of a body corporate are managed by its members, they will be liable.
Subsection (7) of Clause 1 is important in that it exempts from prosecution under the Clause any act of depositing wastes which is in accordance with any consent given under any enactment except these relating to town and country planning. An example of an exemption would be a disposal made in accordance with an authorisation issued under the Radioactive Substances Act, 1960, which already imposes a complete control over the disposal of radioactive waste. Another exemption is tipping operations permitted under some local Acts, which normally provide for withdrawal of consent by the authorities concerned where there is reason. On the other hand, the control exercisable under the Town and Country Planning Acts has proved inadequate to deal with the problem of industrial wastes. This inadequacy was commented on in the departmental report dealing with wastes and underlies its recommendations for a new comprehensive control.
In an interim measure of this kind where it has been necessary to take across-the-board powers, Clauses 2 and 3 set out the notification procedures which constitute the other main provision of the Bill. These procedures do not of themselves give local authorities or river authorities any new powers of control, and do not otherwise affect fundamentally

the operations of those concerned in waste disposal. They merely ensure that the authorities have full information about the nature and quantities of particular categories of waste being generated or disposed of in their areas, and the location of the premises and disposal sites in question, so that they can better carry out their proper functions of safeguarding public health and the purity of rivers and water supplies.
The provisions in the Bill concerning notification are necessarily complicated, but that does not mean that the procedure to be followed from day to day by those concerned is equally complicated. I hope that, following discussions with interested parties, it will be possible to issue a circular after the Bill becomes law setting out the obligations of each of the parties concerned and perhaps suggesting in simple terms the sort of procedure which might be followed.
The effects of the provisions of Clauses 2 and 3, which must be read as a whole, are briefly these. Anyone removing any poisonous, noxious or polluting waste, whether solid or liquid, must give notice, or ensure that someone else gives notice, at least three clear days beforehand to the authorities; that is to say, to the borough or district council and the river authority, and in Scotland the river purification board, both in the area from which the waste is to be removed and in the area in which it is to be deposited. He must also give a copy of the notice to the contractor or haulier, if he is engaging one, before the waste is removed.
In the majority of cases, this procedure should not prove as onerous as it may seem. Firms disposing of similar consignments regularly will be able to comply with the Bill by sending notices covering a number of weeks, provided that they are sent three clear days before the first load is dispatched. I envisage some sort of season ticket operation for the person who disposes day after day, without the necessity of a separate notice for each day.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: The right hon. Gentleman refers to the sending of a notice three days before a load is dispatched. Is it realistic to expect a meaningful assessment of what may be a complicated analysis in three days, three weeks, or even three months?

Mr. Walker: I believe that this is the correct way to proceed. I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. I put the opposite case. If we provided for three months' notice instead of three days', dangerous toxic wastes might be held at factory premises for three months, which could be equally dangerous to various people there. I want to create a procedure whereby in the interim period, with district authorities operating this, any authority which is in doubt can contact my Department immediately for expert advice. I shall make this clear to authorities in a circular. If it is of a size where it is not in doubt, there is no difficulty. After local government reform there will be no problem, because we shall be dealing with counties and metropolitan districts which will have the necessary staffs to deal with every type of case. But, in the interim, authorities which are in doubt about waste can contact my Department, which will give the best professional advice available.
Clause 7 (2) provides that the requirements concerning notification shall come into effect on a day appointed by order. My intention is that the provisions of Clause 1 concerning dumping of noxious substances in dangerous circumstances shall come into force as soon as the Bill becomes law, but that the notification procedures shall not be brought into effect until regulations are made under Clause 2(4).
These are regulations under which I may exempt from the notification procedure certain routine and harmless tipping operations by prescribing for this purpose wastes of certain descriptions deposited in a prescribed manner or by persons of a prescribed class, and so on. It will be my intention to exempt from this procedure as many activities as I can with safety.
The criterion must always be: is there a risk that the poisonous, noxious or polluting wastes in question could in the circumstances obtaining do any harm to persons or animals, or pollute or contaminate water? Each must be considered in the light of the technical advice available to me. I have in mind especially refuse from houses and other residential premises and from commercial or trade premises. In this connection, I shall have regard to the recommendations on the classification of refuse in the

Report of the Working Party on Refuse Collection which was published in 1967.
With regard to industrial wastes, I shall want to have regard to the wastes referred to on page 92 of the Report of the Technical Committee on the Disposal of Toxic Wastes as being suitable for exclusion from the authorisation procedure which it recommends. Wastes from the paper and board manufacturing and food processing industries may be suitable for exemption from the notification procedure, and I hope that discussions will take place with industry and others on how best these exemptions can be defined.
Perhaps I might give some assurances now to the farming community. Certain powers to exempt the disposal of wastes from the notification procedure have been proposed with agriculture, horticulture and forestry specifically in mind. Some farm wastes can quite safely, often with benefit, be applied to farm land even though they can create environmental hazards if disposed of elsewhere without proper precautions. Examples are slurry from livestock units and the liquors resulting from the preparation of silage.
Surplus quantities of agricultural chemicals used for the protection of crops and livestock are another problem with which a farmer has to deal. These pesticides are sold only for agricultural and forestry use after the Government are satisfied that they should give rise to no danger when used in the recommended manner. A farmer or a forester often has some of a chemical left over after his spraying operations are completed. Even though some of those chemical wastes are potentially dangerous in the concentrated form, they can quite safely be applied to farm land at the recommended concentrations. Indeed, this is one of the safe methods of disposal already recommended by my right hon. and hon. Friends the Agricultural Ministers.
I intend to use the powers under Clause 2(4)(a) to exempt these practices from the notification procedure. A requirement that they should be notified would not further the objectives of this Bill, and it could deter farmers, growers and foresters from getting rid of their surplus chemicals by such appropriate routes, possibly with the result that more partly-filled containers of pesticides that the farmer no longer requires would be retained indefinitely on the farm. This


would create unnecessary risks. I should add, and make it clear, that if a farmer wishes to dispose of surplus chemicals to a contractor or on a rubbish tip or elsewhere than on agricultural or forestry land the notification requirements would apply to him just as to anyone else.
The notices to be given under Clauses 2 and 3 must contain the information which is obviously required: the address of the premises from which the waste is to be removed and the land on which it is to be deposited and the name of the person who is to remove it. In addition, information must be given about the quantity of the waste and its nature and chemical composition.
Clause 2(7) makes provision for a relatively stiff fine for failing to give the required notices or for giving a false statement. This provision is qualified by the statutory defences available under subsection (8) to those who have acted in good faith but have nevertheless committed an offence relating to notices. I make no apology for the stiff penalties available where the notification requirements are defied. If local authorities and river authorities are to play an effective part in achieving improvements in the disposal of toxic wastes on land they must have the full and reliable information which the Bill aims to give them.
With regard to the penalties for an offence involving deliberate falsehood, it will be possible, where necessary, to take proceedings in serious cases on indictment under Section 5 of the Perjury Act, 1911, which relates to the making of false statements, even if not under oath, in any notice required by an Act of Parliament. The penalties provided under Section 5 of the 1911 Act are imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine, or both.
Local authorities are themselves required under Clause 4(3) to give notices to river authorities providing full information about wastes deposited on their own tips except where the materials or operations are exempted from this procedure under the regulations which I have mentioned. Local authorities are also required under Clause 4(4) to keep records of the description and quantities of wastes which are deposited in their areas and the places where the wastes are deposited. All this is essential if authorities

are to be able to exercise an effective vigilance over the deposit of toxic wastes in the areas for which they are responsible.

Mr. Gordon Oakes: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves this point, may I call his attention to paragraph 31 (a) of the Royal Commission's Report which asks the Government to prescribe that
waste disposal contractors and manufacturing organisations who transport and dispose of their own toxic wastes
should be registered by county councils? Does he think that it will assist local authorities if they keep a register, as recommended by the Royal Commission, in addition to the powers which are being provided in the Bill?

Mr. Walker: I should certainly like to consider registration. When emergency legislation of this type is brought in very quickly, great problems can be caused by waiting to go through the process of careful checking whether firms are appropriate for registration or not. I shall have other opportunities for legislation, and before then I should like to discuss with local authorities and industry the possibility of getting some sensible system of registration about this.

Mr. Dalyell: Would the right hon. Gentleman help the House by giving some clue to his attitude about whether this record ought to be kept secret? At present a person who pours gallons of cyanide into a river can be fined £100, and yet an inspector with the Alkali Inspectorate can be sent to prison for three months for breathing a word of the details of the river effluent to a member of the public. That is ridiculous.

Mr. Walker: That is a different question from that of records and the disclosure of information. The fact is that unless the movement of dangerous waste is recorded beforehand with the authorities concerned, as a result of the Bill an offence will be created. As regards the movement of these waste materials, whatever site is concerned, unless a record is kept in the office and is sent to the local authorities and the river authority concerned, the industry concerned will be committing an offence. We are saying not that the records should be public but that copies of them should be sent to the authorities concerned before


the movement of the goods takes place. That is an important, stiff move which I comprehend the necessity to undertake.
If anyone dumps cyanide from now onwards, the penalty will be not a fine of £100 but imprisonment for five years. Unless he has given notice beforehand to the local authorities and the river authority which might be involved, he will commit a further offence as a result of the Bill. Thus, we are creating a situation in which a record of the movement of any of these goods will not just have to be kept but will have to be disclosed.

Mr. Dalyell: Open to anyone who wants it?

Mr. Walker: It will be sent to the local authorities and also to the river authorities. Both those important public institutions will be informed of all movements of goods.

Mr. Gordon A. T. Bagier: The right hon. Gentleman has laid great stress on the effect on local government and river authorities, but fears could arise from the fact that a responsible company wants to dump materials in Silksworth mine, a disused mine outside Sunderland. It may be that the fear of the local residents is that the knowledge of the local authority people and the river authority is such that they cannot be certain that what could amount to a huge poison bottle underneath an area is safe. Can the right hon. Gentleman say where in the Bill one can find safeguards to allay the fears of local people by showing that it is safe to do that?

Mr. Walker: From April, 1974, we are putting on the new county authorities the responsibility for the disposal of waste. They will have the task of seeing that the disposal of waste in their areas is carried out in a safe manner and in accordance with the best scientific advice which they can obtain. I do not think there can be a better situation than that of a major authority saying that in its view it is safe to dispose of goods in a certain way at a certain location. If these authorities want additional advice, or feel that on a particular question their technical advice is not appropriate, my Department will give the best technical advice available to it. On all these questions

of waste disposal there will in future be both a major Government Department and major local authorities available to deal with them, rather than the present district authorities.
The reason why I originally suggested that we should wait for local government reform before bringing in this type of legislation was that at present I have to give this power to district authorities, and some are small districts which do not have the necessary expertise and technical advice available to them to enable them to do this job as thoroughly as we would like it done. That is why in the circular I shall make it known to the authorities that if they have any doubts I shall be only too willing to give every possible technical advice that is available to my Department.
Apart from our seeing that major local authorities supervise this job and have a basic power over it, if they wish to seek the advice of a major central Government Department they will be able to do so. One cannot go further than that in trying to ensure that toxic and dangerous waste is disposed of in the best possible manner.

Mr. Bagier: My hon. Friend the Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Urwin) and I have a particular problem over the pit I mentioned. Whatever problems a local authority has, if the Bill is passed will the whole weight of the Department's scientific knowledge be placed behind any decision about the safety of the local inhabitants?

Mr. Walker: Any decision by a local authority is that authority's decision, and no Government Department underwrites that decision. I am willing to make available to local authorities all the technical advice available to me about pollution. If the local authorities concerned in this case would like it, it will be available.
To those who wanted a Bill which imposed a new system of control over toxic waste disposal based on applications, consents and rights of appeal, I would point out that this would have meant a substantial administrative machine supported by the technical advice of chemists and geologists. With local government reorganisation only two years away, it is not possible to call


upon existing local authorities to undertake the work which this would entail. The Government came to the conclusion that the situation called for an interim measure which would be both simple and effective. I think that the Bill will meet this criterion. The penalties should deter anyone from wilfully putting fellow human beings at risk.

Mr. Ernle Money: The enforcement authority under Clause 4(1) is to be the local authority. Will my right hon. Friend's Department invite the local authorities to ensure that there is a regular pattern of prosecutions—the powers vary so much between summary and indictable offences—so that some counties do not get a reputation as weak prosecuting authorities, as is the case in some other sectors?

Mr. Walker: Under the Bill any member of the public, not just a local authority, can bring a prosecution. As to whether it should be on indictment or not, I hope that local authorities will assess the seriousness of the case. Many of the cases of which we have heard publicly recently have been of an incredibly criminal nature. Children's lives have been put at risk by irresponsible dumping either by fly tippers at night or by industrialists who knew this to be the case. The maximum penalties under the Bill should be brought to bear on these people. Therefore, any local authority with a case of this nature should try to see that the maximum penalties are imposed. It is only if local authorities do that that we shall get respect for this law.
The Bill will also enable local authorities to assess the size of the problem and plan a waste disposal strategy for the future.

Mr. Tom King: I appreciate and support the emergency need for an immediate measure. Is my right hon. Friend considering anticipating this problem in future? Instead of going for a post hoc solution to all the various companies which have produced toxic waste, would it not be possible to require a company which wanted to purchase cyanide, for instance, to produce a certificate showing that it knew what would be done with the toxic waste?

Mr. Walker: I want to attain the most comprehensive system of control of dangerous materials on land, in water or in the air. We must first create the means of disposing of dangerous materials in all their forms and of monitoring them. It appears that we do not have this system. I inherited—this is no criticism of my predecessors, because all Governments continued this system—a situation in which a multitude of small authorities dealt with the disposal of refuse in all its forms. This was perfectly adequate to the sort of problems faced at the beginning of the century, but is totally inadequate to the problems which face it today. This is why under local government reform refuse disposal must be handled by major authorities with all the investment power that this necessitates.
We also lack the basic monitoring of the nature of the disposal of waste. Some of it is done by private enterprise firms and some by local authorities, and much of it has been done without anyone knowing how it has been done. We must build up a system to tell us what is being done with the waste. It must provide for the massive storing of information about toxic waste because in future anyone moving it will have to declare the fact three days before. We shall therefore build up a considerable knowledge of the movements of dangerous materials and how they are disposed of. I would hope this would enable us in subsequent legislation to provide an effective method of disposing and controlling these wastes.
This is a useful and interim measure. It brings the penalties up to what is required. It introduces a system which will provide my Department, myself and future Secretaries of State with a welter of information on this topic never before possessed by Government and will enable governments to deal with the problem in an even more comprehensive manner. It is in this spirit that I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

11.7 p.m.

Mr. John Silkin: On this side we appreciate very much the speed with which the Bill has been produced, and we hope we shall see it through during the course of this week. Politicians, whether in Government or not, are today often accused of being complacent


about the possible destruction of our environment. But unless something becomes so important in our judgment as politicians that we decide that action should be taken we take the advice of scientists, and for every scientist who says "Do something" at least half a dozen will say "Do nothing".
This is not the case with this Bill, and it is a little cheering to know that the House can act speedily not only in the case of war or in the case of an emergency but also in dealing with civil dangers that beset the nation when the environment is threatened.
But the very fact that the Bill is being dealt with so speedily is itself a source of danger. I hope I am not being churlish or ungraceful if I point out, as some hon. Members have done in interventions, some of the pitfalls that we should avoid. As the Secretary of State very fairly said, this is an interim measure, and this implies that the whole basis of the final effect will be looked at again soon. Can we have a little more detail when the Under-Secretary winds up of the legislation the Government have in hand for providing more permanent, more general, wider ranging measures for dealing with the whole problem of poisonous wastes?
It is essential that such a measure shall come forward as soon as possible and shall be as comprehensive as possible. I have no doubt that as this present interim measure develops and is shown to develop we shall see its mistakes. I do not criticise the Secretary of State for that. This is caused by the speed of bringing in the Bill and the inevitable urgency of the problem. I hope we shall have a chance to return to this and deal with it as soon as possible once we have learnt from the experience.
I go all the way with my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) on the question of three days' notice. He seemed to be reasonably satisfied with the Secretary of State's answer. I am not quite so satisfied. To ask an authority, which may not have all the power or information necessary to deal with the situation, to get in touch with the Department to receive advice—and, first, to have been made aware of the problem—in three days is to understate the time needed. I do not go as

far as three months, and the Secretary of Slate's answer on that was powerful enough, but I believe that about seven days would be much more use to a local authority in that situation.

Mr. Charles Simeons: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is not something new that will suddenly descend on local authorities? They all know what is going on anyway, or should know. All that the authority will do is to make it official, because it is seeing it happening unofficially.

Mr. Silkin: I wish I could say that, but I do not think I can, and I see that the Secretary of State agrees with me. We are dealing with a new problem. That is why we are taking these important measures to deal with it. Cyanide is in the minds of us all at this moment, but it will be something else tomorrow. That is the danger we face. Therefore, we might consider whether three days is a sufficient period. I do not want to be dogmatic about the matter or be churlish, but maybe seven days would be a little more help to a local authority in that connection.
I turn to the question of fines on summary conviction. I assume that the reason why the sum of £400 appears is that it is today's maximum for a fine on summary conviction. I do not professionally practice in the criminal courts, so I do not know.

Mr. Laurance Reed: It is £50,000.

Mr. Silkin: On summary conviction?

Mr. Reed: Under the Oil in Navigable Waters Act, 1971.

Mr. Silkin: The hon. Gentleman is an expert in his field, so I bow to his knowledge. But if that is so, while £50,000 may not necessarily be excessive, the difference between that and £400 is very large. Consideration might be given to increasing the figure of £400, particularly in Clause 3(4), and I wonder whether the earlier figure in Clause 2(7) might not be increased. It would be interesting to know why what we all regard as so devastating a crime as to require emergency provision should carry a fine which is meaningless to most commercial companies of the kind likely to be involved.
My next point concerns Clause 4(2). I think that in this connection my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian meant to refer to the effect of Section 287 of the Public Health Act, 1936, with its provision of a maximum of three months' imprisonment for any official who gives away what may be called trade secrets. That is re-enacted in the Bill. It seems rather curious that a local government official is liable to go to prison for three months if he happens to tell someone outside the local authority what is trade information but also information connected with the disposal of harmful products, whereas someone who makes a statement that he knows to be false is liable to a maximum of £400.

Mr. Peter Walker: And may be two years' imprisonment under another Statute.

Mr. Silkin: I find that a little odd. Clause 3(4) says:
Any person who—

(a) contravenes subsection (2) above, or
(b) in a notice given for the purposes of that subsection, makes any statement which he knows to be false or does not believe to be true, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine of £400."

Mr. Peter Walker: It would not be under this legislation but under the Perjury Act, 1911. He could be prosecuted under that Act and be subject to two years' imprisonment.

Mr. Silkin: The Minister for Local Government and Development and I have become old friends again and again on the Local Government Bill. He will recall the case of Benjamin Franklin and his large cat and small cat and the two holes he put in his kitchen door to let them go out. If the Perjury Act contains much more than a £400 fine and/or two years' imprisonment, what is this £400 doing in the Bill? It seems to be extraordinary. Whether we are having two holes for two cats to get in or out, it seems extraordinary that the official secrecy in connection with something as dangerous as this should be still preserved—and preserved to the extent of sending the official to prison for a three-month maximum sentence if he breaks Section 287 of the Public Health Act and gives away trade secrets connected with effluent.
My hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes) made a very good point on the general subject of official secrecy. The Second Report of the Royal Commission only this week, in paragraphs 3 to 10, criticised the amount of official secrecy that exists, and, therefore, one would hope that records kept by a local authority could be available for public inspection. I see the point about the register. The right hon. Gentleman dealt fairly with that. This is something he hinted might be included, after discussion with the local authorities, in future legislation. But I do not see why records as such should not be available to the public. There are civically-minded local residents who would be able to see the point. They might have the knowledge of the hon. Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Laurance Reed) of this sort of subject, and be able to sound the alarm before the danger becomes too great. I would have hoped that that, too, might be looked at.
I hope I have not appeared to be too critical. My aim, as it is the aim of all of us, is to try to block up as many holes as we can in this process to ensure that we produce the best possible legislation. I appreciate that this is interim legislation and that it will not deal with everything. There are so many things that we cannot foresee now. But we can make something better of the Bill, and again I say this in no spirit of criticism but trying to be constructive. I hope the Minister will be able to satisfy me that the Government have in mind a much more definitive method of dealing with the whole problem.

11.20 p.m.

Mr. Laurance Reed: I should like to join in the general welcome of the Bill. It is not all-embracing of course, as it is something of a holding operation until more detailed legislation can be brought in, but it fills an important gap in our pollution defences.
I particularly welcome the more realistic approach to penalties. As you may recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have had my differences with the Government in the past on this issue, notably about the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill, when some of us succeeded in persuading the Government to lift the fine from the maximum


of £5,000, which they proposed, to a maximum of £50,000 on summary conviction. The Bill provides for a maximum of only £400 on summary conviction, but I think that the distinction is justifiable. With dumping from ships, it is important to nab the culprit while he is within British jurisdiction, but under the Bill that sort of problem does not arise.
Even so, I raise the query whether in charges against companies, as distinct from individuals, there should not be some provision for automatically having a trial on indictment so that the greater fine—that is, the fine without limit, which is obviously more appropriate to a company than to an individual—may operate. I suggest that £400 to an individual is a great deal of money, but to most companies it is chicken feed. The wilful polluter is as dangerous to our society as the maniac who drives down the motorway in thick fog, and it is entirely appropriate that a prison sentence should be available to the courts in such cases.
However, I wonder how enthusiastic the courts will be about imposing such sentences. Personally, I find it difficult to envisage the day when we shall see the chairman of I.C.I., the chairman of Unilever and the chairman of R.T.Z. sharing a cell in Wormwood Scrubs. If that happened, I dare say that the treasurer of the Conservative Party would have something to say. Nevertheless, to have imprisonment in reserve is correct.
However, it comes down to how effective a fine will be as a deterrent to pollution offences of the kind we are ordaining in the Bill. There is no limit to the fine in cases tried on indictment, but it is a question of at what level the courts as a matter of custom will set the fine in practice. Perhaps Parliament should provide a minimum fine to guide the courts, to show them how seriously we regard such offences. At the moment fines are worth paying because of the savings possible as a result of a breach of the law. I have had instances in Bolton.
The Bolton Institute of Technology helps out with the control of effluent discharges into rivers, for example, and the experts there tell me that although they are always advising companies to do this, that, or the other, the companies say that it is so much cheaper simply to pay

the fines. Failure to comply with the pollution control orders can result in useful savings to a company, and, therefore, if a fine is to be meaningful, the minimum should in some way be related to the potential saving tempting the would-be polluter.
The Bill does not cover dumping at sea, only on land, which includes land covered by water, which I assume means things like gravel pits and flashes and so on. We have a voluntary system for dumping poisonous or other wastes at sea operated now by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I have long argued that as the pollution laws on land are tightened up, as witnessed by the Bill, there will be increasing pressure on waste disposal companies to use the sea. We have signed a convention on this subject in recent months relating to the North-East Atlantic, and I hope that it will not be too long before the Government are able to bring in a Bill to ratify that convention. Ideally, it would have been better if both Bills had been run in parallel.

Mr. Money: Would my hon. Friend agree that there is one other possible lacuna, which is tidal rivers, to which the Prevention of Pollution Act does not automatically apply and which could, therefore, be an ideal dumping ground for those inclined to dump a vast amount of waste in tidal rivers?

Mr. Reed: Yes, I would accept that. The Oslo Convention deals only with dumping of waste beyond territorial waters. Within national limits we need more sophisticated legislation.
In its Second Report the Royal Commission had this to say about dumping at sea:
The Technical Committee"—
that is, the Technical Committee on the Disposal of Toxic Solid Wastes—
considered that there was some scope for expanding the practice of safe disposal at sea of certain toxic wastes. There may be a case for this, but in our view it is essential to have adequate safeguards and, in particular, we do not share the Technical Committee's confidence in the voluntary consent system operated by the appropriate Departments. We are glad that the Government expect a Convention to control dumping in the North East Atlantic area to be concluded by the countries concerned in the very near future and we hope that legislation to implement the Convention will be introduced as a matter of priority.


I share the view expressed by my right hon. Friend that we must all participate in trying to enforce the legislation we are enacting. It is not just a question of the public health and other officials in various local authorities doing their job effectively. In my constituency there has been an examination of waste disposal dumps, and nothing very dangerous has been found, but I have taken the precaution of writing to the chief executive of my local authority telling him that at the present time—that is, between the introduction of the Bill and the time when it becomes law and, perhaps, the time before it can be effectively implemented—there will be a tremendous temptation on companies with solid and toxic wastes in their yards to get rid of them before the law is in force, and that now is the time for maximum vigilance.
When I say that I hope that the public will play their part in enforcing the law, I do not mean the sort of tactics envisaged by Mr. Peter Hain and his young Liberals. Disruptive tactics of the kind they propose are in no way helpful. Perhaps they would consider doing what I propose to do. I propose to buy a couple of shares in companies which are handling dangerous or difficult wastes and attend their annual general meetings and ask a few careful but pertinent questions as to how the companies are to dispose of their wastes. Although shareholders may not understand the subtleties or niceties of ecology, they will quickly understand any damage done to their own pockets.

11.27 p.m.

Mr. T. W. Urwin: Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin), I give a general welcome to the Bill, which must be regarded as essentially an interim measure. I am pleased by the initiative taken by the Secretary of State. My right hon. and hon. Friends, in common with many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, look forward to the early introduction of further, extending legislation in order to take much fuller control of this very difficult situation.
I address myself first to the early remarks of the Secretary of State, when he referred to the indiscriminate dumping of toxic materials and called upon the public

to tender any evidence they may have, difficult as that may be, to the local authority, which has the primary responsibility under the Bill to deal with such a matter. Does that mean, in effect, that the Secretary of State is prepared to apply an amnesty to those people, primarily drivers, and employers who have been the instigators of deposits of this kind in the past, prior to the Bill becoming law? In the area in which I live, and around my constituency, in common with those of the majority of my right hon. and hon. Friends representing constituencies in the North, and as applies also to many coal-mining areas throughout the country, we are highly vulnerable to this kind of indiscriminate disposal of all kinds of materials if only because there is a proliferation of pit shafts, many of them unmarked and long-since forgotten, but nevertheless in the ownership of the National Coal Board. Such large holes in the ground are a big attraction to people who want to absolve themselves of any financial responsibility by disposing of wastes through them.
I suggest that having regard to the intensification of this kind of activity it may be to the advantage of the general public if the Government consult the National Coal Board in order to ensure that a complete survey is undertaken to ascertain where these long-disused shafts are located, so that the necessary steps can be taken to seal them, preferably with a thick bed of concrete, and positively to prevent any possibility of wastes being dumped there in the future.
I mention that particularly because in the Newcastle Journalover the weekend, in addition to a great deal of public attention being focused on this serious problem—a problem that has developed quite intensively over the last few months—an article appeared, headed "Midnight Cowboy's Warning", drawing particular attention to a colliery in Northumberland where suspicions have been aroused that this kind of dumping has been going on, to such an extent that a landowner has been warned not to allow tankers on his land after acid waste had been found dumped there.
I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, in the hope that something tangible is done, that prevention is better than cure, and that remedial


measures should be introduced to ensure that these holes—including long-forgotten wells—are covered.
The Bill is welcome if only because it extends the penalties which can be imposed upon people who do not comply with the law. A fine of £400 may not be sufficient to deter people, even though once the Bill becomes law people may think much more seriously before engaging in this activity. The fine could be much more prohibitive if it were larger.
I crave the indulgence of the House in passing quickly on to another item of constituency interest. The Bill makes new provisions for dumping on a much more legalised basis than hitherto, and local authorities will have some difficulty in finding suitable places upon which to dump toxic material. I am sure that my local government colleagues in Sunderland—and when I say that, I refer to Sunderland as a county borough under the existing system of local government; it may be that after the local elections in a few weeks' time the present Conservative-controlled authority will become a Labour-controlled authority—

The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page) indicated dissent.

Mr. Urwin: The Minister shakes his head; he has a disappointment coming to him.
Whichever political party operates in local government the problems will be the same. The Secretary of State will recall receiving a letter from me last week expressing deep concern about the proposal to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Bagier) has already referred in his two interventions in the Minister's speech. It is a proposal by, I understand, a firm of disposal experts, Effluent Disposal Limited, which operates a scheme of disposal in a disused mine in Walsall, Staffordshire. A similar proposal has been made by this firm to dispose of between 10 and 20 million gallons of chemical waste sludge, including cyanide, in a pit in my constituency, the Silksworth colliery, which has been closed since November last year. The pit is very dry and is considered to be wholly suitable for the purpose for which this firm wishes to use it.
Needless to say, the thought of the disposal of such large quantities of toxic material, even though it will be 2,000 ft. underground, has aroused a considerable amount of public criticism as well as concern in a heavily built-up area. The pit comprises 7¾ miles of underground workings and runs extensively under the heavily populated town of Sunderland as well as under the surrounding area of the Silksworth colliery.
Clause 1(3) provides that
where waste is deposited in containers, this shall not of itself be taken to exclude any risk which might be expected to arise if the waste were not in containers".
That makes very good sense. I am sure that the Secretary of State appreciates that, even though this material will be 2,000 ft. underground and, therefore apparently safe for all time, it would be a serious mistake to conclude that that would be so because there are movements in coal mines and movements involving falls of stone. Even though this colliery would be required, if only by the National Coal Board, to be maintained in a safe condition, especially after this material has been deposited, one cannot fully control the geological forces once they begin to work.
One can therefore fully understand the very deep concern which has been expressed, leading to the formation of a so-called action group in this area to wage war on the proposal. A very heavy burden of responsibility devolves upon the Secretary of State and his colleagues to ensure that before this material is deposited there is no possibility of leakage into water supplies and rivers, thus creating not only environmental pollution but a serious hazard to the 200,000 or 300,000 people in this area. There is considerable doubt about the wisdom of taking this action.
The Secretary of State has spoken about the responsibilities of the local authority. An interesting question arises. If it is deemed that planning permission is required in such cases as this, the local authority, even if it were in support of the scheme, would have to depend entirely on the good will of, in this instance, the National Coal Board or any other landowner on whose land it sought to deposit waste. The position is not clear from the Bill. I believe that


in this instance the National Coal Board is in agreement with the proposal.
Because a precedent has been established at Walsall in Staffordshire, and as we now have this second and presumably only other known application for the use of a colliery for this purpose, it seems to me that this is the beginning of the establishment of what could well be a national policy. I am justified in drawing attention to the consequential problems which flow from the decision, and that is why I asked the Secretary of State in my letter last week to exercise as far as possible personal supervision over this application against the background I have outlined.
Indicative of the deep concern expressed by the man-in-the-street and by experts are the television discussions, question and answer sessions and articles and letters in the correspondence columns of the local Press. I ask the indulgence of the House to quote from an interview which was conducted on 1st March on the B.B.C. Northern Region News with Dr. Hooper, who reads pharmaceutical chemistry in Sunderland Polytechnic. He was asked whether any danger would arise from the dumping of cyanide in Silksworth colliery. The expert replied:
I think there must be. Unless cast-iron guarantees can be given that this could not happen, I would not be happy, and I would question the whole philosophy that if you take toxic material and put it in a large hole in the ground this is the best way of dealing with it. We have the technology, we have the scientific knowledge and ability to render this material non-toxic.
He was asked whether we could do this, and he replied:
Yes, I think we can. I think the only question is that of cost and then it becomes a matter of Government and social priorities. Do we value cheap economic processes more than we value the exposure of people's lives to very serious chemical hazards?
There may be no risk to people's lives, there may be no chemical hazard, but I ask the right hon. Gentleman to look more closely into this matter. He has assured my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South that if necessary the resources of his Department can be made available to ensure complete satisfaction.
Has the Minister estimated the cost of rendering such toxic materials safe and non-toxic for all time? Has he

estimated the cost of conducting extensive and intensive technological research into converting the materials for re-use? In conjunction with the Bill, what research is being done?

Mr. Bagier: Does not my hon. Friend agree that the point he is making at length is one of scale? We should like to have from the Minister an acknowledgment that the scale of the dumping which is being suggested at Silksworth requires more than local authority examination, it requires examination at ministerial level.

Mr. Urwin: I accept the point made by my hon. Friend, and I am sure the right hon. Gentleman has noted it. Bearing in mind that the pit was closed only in November and the possibility that there may be a demand for coal to make a greater contribution to our energy requirements, will the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry ensure that nothing in the proposal will prevent the re-opening of the colliery in the circumstances to which I have referred?

11.45 p.m.

Sir Bernard Braine: The hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Urwin) raised a matter of great importance, to which I shall refer in a moment.
However, at the outset I should like to say, as I indicated in the debate on 3rd March, that the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors warmly welcomes the Government's resolve to strengthen the law on the disposal of industrial wastes. Nevertheless, it is true to say that responsible elements in the industry do not think the Bill goes far enough. Clearly beyond this interim measure, which is designed to meet a purely emergency situation, we shall need a far-reaching and comprehensive law to deal with the whole question of the disposal of all forms of waste.
I have no complaint to make about the penalties prescribed in the Bill, but I feel that the idea of imprisonment may well be unworkable for two reasons. I say this, first, because of the difficulty of defining the responsible person in a corporation; and, secondly, because the Bill does not include a list of the materials


which are poisonous, noxious or polluting and the presence of which is liable to give rise to an environmental hazard. Because the Bill is not precise on those two aspects, the courts may well require much more guidance before giving prison sentences. If this guidance cannot be given now, it seems to be wrong to put this provision in the Bill, and I believe that it should be deleted. I know that my right hon. Friend has power to exempt materials, but if at a later stage he wishes to make regulations to prescribe specific dangerous wastes I am sure the House will give him full support.

Mr. Peter Walker: It is not possible to accept either of my hon. Friend's suggestions. On his first point about the difficulty of defining the responsible officer, I assure him that there is plenty of legislation in force at present where the same considerations would apply and where officers of corporate companies are imprisoned. Therefore, there is no difficulty on that point. As for my hon. Friend's suggestion that the Government should act only in regard to certain specified wastes, I would point out that we all know that in chemistry one has only to mix a couple of chemicals to get a new product, which product could be substituted for another. One would only have to mix in another chemical and the whole purpose of a list would be lost. We have to satisfy ourselves that a chemical product is or is not dangerous. If it is dangerous, the offenders may face imprisonment.

Sir Bernard Braine: I am grateful for those assurances, and we shall wait to see how these provisions work out.
I am not particularly happy with the provisions relating to documentation of wastes. The National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors has told me that it considers that all manufacturing concerns and any others with wastes to dispose of should be required to file an annual return of all wastes produced, showing what has happened to those wastes. Failure to make such returns should attract penalties. We must remember that there are unscrupulous originators of waste who dump it on their own land or hire an equally unscrupulous lorry driver to dump it at some remote spot at night. Every person concerned

in such a process must be made accountable.
I come to the point which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring. It was a point of great substance, and I do not know whether it is covered by the Bill. I am told that there are 50,000 mine shafts in Britain, the majority of which are on private property, Some are on factory premises. An annual return of waste produced, which I have suggested should be made mandatory on all manufacturing industry, would reveal whether these were being used and where they were. I am certain that the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring is right. I am told that many chemists and geologists hold that the use of mine shafts for the disposal of toxic wastes should be prohibited because if contamination of acquifers should take place subsequently, very little could be done to remedy the matter. We do not know enough about the risks. It would be possible, I suppose, to provide some sort of seal by using certain waste materials and mixing them with cement; but what would be the cost, and how long would it take to organise such an expensive operation?
It may occasion some surprise, there fore, to hon. Members to learn that there are moves afoot to extend the use of old mine workings for the disposal of toxic materials. Indeed, there is a planning application currently being considered to use a pit in the North-East, the property of the National Coal Board, for the disposal of a wide range of toxic materials. Indeed, it may be the very case to which the hon. Gentleman referred—

Mr. Urwin: This is the very pit of which I was speaking. It is Silksworth colliery, near Sunderland, in my constituency.

Sir Bernard Braine: I understand that it is even suggested that highly toxic materials in drums should be stored in the galleries and passages underground. I suggest seriously to my right hon. Friend that until a great deal more is known about the effects of depositing toxic materials underground the use of mine shafts should be discouraged, if not actually prohibited.
In my view it is a great pity that the opportunity is not being taken with this Bill to provide that certain dangerous wastes should be treated in ways which


are safe and specific. My right hon. Friend dismissed this point quickly at the beginning of my remarks. Public opinion about the dumping of cyanide has been expressed volubly, and I suggest that we should take note of it. We all know, for example, that cyanide can be made harmless by oxidisation. However, because cyanide will decompose in the ground, it can still be buried in suitable sites and this will be lawful under the Bill. But is that what people want? Is that what this House wants? I do not think so.
People who address their minds to this subject want to see a cessation of the practice of dumping cyanide and similar dangerous materials untreated and so do responsible elements in the waste disposal industry. Let me correct one misconception which was alleged in the Press, and, I believe, on radio, that there is only one plant in Britain capable of treating cyanide. That is not true. There are several such plants, though, unhappily, they are not used to the full by industry. Moreover, despite the under-utilisation of existing facilities, there are companies which are prepared to invest in treatment plants, and these plants will ensure destruction by incineration or by chemical treatment. But there is no inducement for those methods of disposal which are complete and safe, to be used, if such materials can continue to be deposited in the ground.
I welcome the provision in Clause 2 for the notification of dangerous wastes to local authorities. But I see that in the final analysis it is the river authority which is the sole arbiter. In the absence of a plan which relates the need to protect our water resources with the need of industry to dispose of its wastes, I fear that real difficulties will arise. Whether we like it or not, industry has to dispose of its wastes, and it is creating more and sophisticated wastes all the time.
I should like to know about the manufacturer who according to my right hon. Friend is prepared to doctor his waste to change its nature. The trouble with many manufacturers is that they are not taking enough care and trouble with their wastes. Some of them, particularly the smaller firms, have been content to allow somebody to take the waste away, provided

that it could be got safely off the premises. The greater part of our industrial waste must go to land burial on approved sites and under controlled conditions. Yet the river authorities have no mandate to consider the needs of industry, though I commend the wise views of the chairman of the Severn River Authority which appeared in the Daily Telegrapha few days ago on the need for a national network of disposal sites for hazardous materials. Surely, there should be some quasi-governmental authority to ensure that sufficient disposal sites in the right places are provided to satisfy industry's requirements. The Bill does nothing in this regard.
There is, therefore, a dire need for more properly controlled sites. Planning authorities should take a more realistic view than they have been taking. They should take account of the fact that if more authorised sites are not provided materials will go to unauthorised sites. Inevitably this means that some planning applications for sites which have been rejected should be urgently reconsidered.
I have in mind one planning application in the Midlands which proposed the building of a waste treatment complex, including cyanide oxidation, on the site of an old brickworks which had closed down. It was rejected mainly on the ground of amenity. Yet the site concerned is located in the centre of the area of the recent cyanide controversy. Had the application been granted and the plant built, industry in that area would have had the opportunity to send its waste there for treatment instead of dumping it.
There is a real danger, therefore, that some firms will have to stop production on the day that the Bill comes into force unless more disposal sites are provided immediately or, alternatively, some moratorium is declared. Therefore, I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider these points, which come from those who are engaged in the day-to-day operation of waste disposal.
We all seek the same end: to steer industry towards a more responsible and safer method of disposing of dangerous and toxic materials. However, it is not sufficient to penalise. The means must be provided to enable industry to act in a responsible way.
Equally, disposal contractors who have already invested heavily in plant capable


of destroying dangerous waste which, is not full used by industry at the moment, should be encouraged to invest in further plant. But the Government must be more specific than they have been about how certain dangerous wastes are to be treated. I am not presuming to say what my right hon. Friend's regulations should contain but if he means to treat the problem seriously, known dangerous and toxic materials must be named and the methods of treatment must be prescribed. Having said that, if the Bill does not go far enough, at least it is a step in the right direction and I give it my full support.

12 midnight.

Mr. Michael Cocks: I think that the Secretary of State is doing an extremely efficient job to bring forward legislation which is receiving general approval, and in leaving the political dirty work to the Local Government and Housing Ministers in Committees upstairs.
The Bill is extremely necessary, but I think there is an air of euphoria about the debate. The right hon. Gentleman said that this problem had been growing for some time, but, in fact, it has been with us ever since the Industrial Revolution began and was a great deal worse in byegone ages, when nitric acid poured out and devastated the whole countryside. It is really that we have become much more aware of it, much more conscious that something should be done, and much more aware of the insidious dangers which hitherto have been masked in society.
We welcome the Bill, but there are one or two things which seem to be unsatisfactory. There is the question of public disclosure, which was raised earlier. There seems to be no valid reason why interested members of the public, often with specialist knowledge of their local areas and environment, should not have access to public records in this respect.
Secondly, there is the question of bringing prosecutions. It is no good saying that if a local authority will not act, then an individual may do so, because if the parallel of the Trade Descriptions Act is considered one realises that if a local weights and measures inspector refuses to act in respect of an alleged infringement, it is no good saying that

an individual member of the public can apply to the magistrates. What chance is there that any result will come from that, even if the private individual could sustain a possible finding against him and the incurring of costs?
A number of hon. Members have said that the Bill is extremely necessary, but it is recognised that it is a short-term response to a serious situation, and I should not like to think that when we look back on this debate in years to come, and when we think about the legislation which is subsequently passed, we shall regret that a little more foresight was not given to what we were doing in this respect.
I grant that the Secretary of State has to act quickly, and I welcome the Bill as far as it goes, but it seems that the arguments put forward from both sides of the House point inexorably in one direction. It has been said by the Secretary of State himself that waste disposal is a function of major local authorities; that they must have responsibility in their own areas for disposal, using the most scientific information and means.
That seems to point towards the fact that we should be thinking in terms not simply of letting local authorities do this work but of having a public authority available specifically to dispose of noxious waste. If such an authority were established, it could do this job free of charge, because it would then become unprofitable and unproductive for the "cowboys" or the "midnight operators" to work.
The system would have to be paid for. Ideally, it could be met by a tax on toxic materials or on the products or processes which generate toxic waste. That tax would deter the use of such materials or processes. Firms already acting in a responsible manner in this respect would hardly be affected. It is true that they might make some contribution towards the new authority, but in return they would get free disposal of their waste.
People who are now acting irresponsibly would have to pay the tax, and there would be no further incentive to try to get rid of waste cheaply by using these fly-by-night contractors who we have heard are so difficult to identify. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) drew attention


to the great difficulties in pinning down the responsibility for this.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I went further than that and said that even when one gives chapter and verse and names and addresses and even points them out to the police, they refuse to act. That is what happened to me.

Mr. Cocks: I am obliged to my hon. Friend.
There is no further place for these people on the picture if the local authorities are prepared to dispose of the waste for nothing. The more irresponsible a firm is in disposing of its waste, the greater the competitive edge that it has over its legitimately-behaving rivals. This is an abuse which we should do our best to correct.
It might be said that firms which had to pay for waste disposal had an incentive to reduce the amount of waste generated—sometimes by extracting things which can be reprocessed and sometimes by creating by-products. A public authority dealing with a large amount of waste might be encouraged to do research into the development of by-products.
I should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would seriously consider such an idea. It is recognised now that the disposal of household refuse is a public service. Eventually we shall have to realise that the disposal of these highly dangerous materials in itself will be a public service. The amenity benefits of doing this will far outweigh the physical cost, so it might be financed out of general taxation. If we do not act clearly and radically and produce some legislation which can be seen to be working, I am afraid that the environmentalists will have a field day.
We can get obsessed with our worry about pollution. When I sat on a Private Bill Committee considering a reservoir scheme, we were told that water was polluted with kaolin, and we were expected to wring our hands in horror. But practically all our food is eaten off kaolin ware, and the internal application of kaolin is a cure in certain conditions. We must keep a balance. We welcome the Bill and will expedite it, but let us think in the long term of taking this matter out of the hands of private exploitation

and giving it to a public authority. The more efficient and honourable a firm, the greater the benefits it will get.

12.8 a.m.

Mr. Charles Simeons: The Bill deals with the deliberate dumping of waste. Would my right hon. Friend also consider the accidental dumping of waste, which sometimes amounts to gross negligence? At present it is not compulsory to build bund walls around tanks filled with corrosive liquids. These are allowed to rust through if the owners are negligent, and rivers become contaminated. I should like this made compulsory in the Bill.
It should also be compulsory that no hose couplings are used between tanks and permanent pipelines. These always go on a Saturday, when the fellow who looks after them is away, and on the Sunday or Monday one sees fish floating upside down in the river. I should also like those responsible for looking after these liquids nominated as responsible if any catastrophes occur. This can all be stopped: it is just that no one bothers. If one is given planning permission one has to have a bund wall, but some of these tanks were installed before planning permissions were required.
I hope that the Secretary of State will also consider cars which are dumped with full petrol tanks. A local newspaper in my constituency has shown photographs of children who have been burned. This is just as bad as cyanide. Children can be killed. This is simply criminal. This dumping should stop. But at the same time local authorities must make proper provision for these cars to be recovered. These cars also present a problem in that they are unstable. Children get under them and are hurt. If the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) is concerned about the prison sentences, let me once again state my remedy. Put the persons concerned in the stocks in Parliament Square—no trial, nothing. They will not do it again.
I ask the Secretary of State to look at Clause 1(7) and consider whether prisons, hospitals and the Ministry of Defence, which are, I believe, immune concerning discharges to sewage works and rivers, also become immune under the Bill. I do not have a bloodthirsty longing to see


my hon. Friends the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Social Services and the Secretary of State for Defence sitting side by side in prison, but I see no reason why they should be immune.
I also ask that the definition of "waste" be considered. Waste may be something for which one process has no further use and it is, therefore, dumped. On another occasion it may provide raw material for another process so that it is not a waste. I would hate the Bill to become a lawyers' paradise in that respect.

12.7 a.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Simeons) because he has touched on one of the points I wish to raise. It concerns the dumping of old vehicles.
Some of these cars, lorries and other vehicles, may be dangerous. In my constituency six schoolchildren have been blown up, maimed for life by them. Why has the Secretary of State brought in a Bill which we all support, and which some think should have stiffer penalties, which does not deal with the problem because he says that there are difficulties of definition or other difficulties in dealing with people who dump these vehicles? Every day hundreds of thousands of them are left or the roads, sometimes in a dangerous position and sometimes causing injury to children.
The Secretary of State said that he has appealed to the public to come forward to help. Hundreds of thousands of people have consistently come forward to help on this matter. When they go to the police station to ask for action they are given a number of replies. They are told that the police are undermanned; they are told that the police are overworked; or they are told that the problem is so prevalent that nothing can be done about it.
Only last week I told the police station at Hornsey that a car with an Irish registration was parked on a bend in Wight-man Road, Hornsey. I said it had been parked there for many months, was now derelict, and there was stuff in the back. I do not know whether it was cyanide or even a bomb. One would have thought that a car with an Irish registration would be worth examining. The car was still there this morning, and I assume

that when I go home tonight it will still be there. It is a danger on the road. Of course, toxic wastes are dangerous. But what is the good of the public taking the Minister's advice and reporting such hazards if no action is taken? It is good to have legislation, but what is the point of it if the right hon. Gentleman will not do anything to see that the law is enforced?
I agree with the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine). There are difficulties in stating by regulation the various dangerous substances covered, and the Minister is right to point out that perhaps every day of the week new ones come on the market. But that does not preclude him from stating by regulation those which are already known. From time to time he could add to the list.

Mr. Peter Walker: Plenty of waste disposal contractors would very much like a list of specific items. That would ease their problems considerably. I am putting a much greater onus on them. I am saying that they are responsible if they dump any waste that proves to be dangerous, which is much tougher than giving them a list of substances and saying "You are guilty if you dump this and not guilty if you dump anything else." I know that the hon. Gentleman wants tough measures, and he may be sure that those are much tougher.

Mr. Lewis: I appreciate that, but the right hon. Gentleman could still have a general list and then mention additional substances as they come along. I should like to see in the Bill a method of trying to prevent the problem before it arises. I cannot see why there cannot be a system of registration at the time of manufacture and sale of such substances, with a cash payment on return of some of them. If I went to a chemist in Piccadilly Circus now I could buy certain substances which would not do me much harm and would perhaps ease some pain, but I should need a prescription. Yet people can buy large quantities of cyanide without any certificate of authorisation. Why should not such substances be supplied only on a certificate of authorisation, with a duplicate going to the local authority? To use the hon. Member for Essex, South-East as an example, if he wanted to buy a ton of cyanide from


I.C.I, he would have to obtain a certificate, and there would automatically be notification to the local authority.
Moreover, I believe there are methods whereby such substances can be re-used. Why should not there be a repayment for quantities returned to the manufacturer?

Sir Bernard Braine: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the valuable support he is giving to my argument. I am sure he appreciates that the reason for asking that dangerous materials should be specified is that the next stage should also be laid down—namely, that we should prescribe the safest and best method of disposing of such materials, in the absence of which they will be disposed of on the cheapest possible sites.

Mr. Lewis: I was coming to the disposal issue, because I am suggesting that we could have a system of cash on return. As a boy, I used to collect bottles and get a penny or two pence on return, and it worked very well. Could there not be a system whereby cyanide barrels, for example, were returned for cash?
I am not happy about providing dumping sites. I would rather see destruction of these materials if this can be done. My objection is that all these dumping sites seem to be in working class areas; they are never in Parliament Square, for example, or in the salubrious areas of the West End. They are in areas like mine, where, as one of the worst bombed boroughs, we still have a lot of bombed sites which have not yet been cleared up and where every night of the week—it is always after dark—anything and everything is dumped. It is not only toxic waste; all sorts of other things are dumped, such as old bedsteads, bricks, and so on. It is not pleasant to have that sort of thing going on next door to one's home, with no one doing anything about it. That is why I am not happy about waste dumping sites and would rather see a system of destruction, with the material returned to the manufacturers under a licensing system.
The right hon. Gentleman said he would like the public to help, and that

would be a very good thing. Regularly on television we have appeals to the public to pay their television licences; we also have regular party political broadcasts. I have never seen the right hon. Gentleman going on television and appealing for public help in this matter by reporting to the authorities if they see this sort of thing going on.

Mr. Peter Walker: I have done it on both networks already.

Mr. Lewis: I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has done it regularly. If he is too busy, perhaps someone else from his Department could do it. It is, after all, a matter of saving life.
A number of hon. Members on both sides would like the Bill strengthened, and I hope that in Committee the right hon. Gentleman will be generous in accepting Amendments to that end. This is, after all, a non-party issue. The hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Simeons), for example, has mentioned strengthening the description of waste and what might be dangerous. If the right hon. Gentleman were to agree to accept as many strengthening Amendments as possible in Committee, he would find that on the remaining stages there would not have to be a debate on a Bill which, despite the welcome given to it, has now taken up two hours of time on Second Reading.

12.25 a.m.

Mr. Arthur Jones: I go somewhat further than welcoming the Bill, for I think that the Secretary of State is to be congratulated on having produced the Bill and persuading his colleagues in the Government to find legislative time for it. I think that we are using that time to good purpose this evening, and I congratulate him on the prompt reaction to the serious disclosures of irresponsible dumping which we have had in recent weeks, when they have been highlighted by particular incidents.
The total extent of dumping involved is remarkable. The Sumner Committee estimated that, including demolition contractors' materials, it was about 20 million tons a year, and the Key Committee, which drew on a partial survey by the Confederation of British Industry, gave a figure of about 200,000 tons of toxic materials a year to be disposed of.


The two figures are material in every sense and give some idea of the magnitude of the problem.
Disposal procedures have to be organised, but I share some of the reservations already expressed. The approach is clearly prescriptive on the part of those who have to dispose of toxic wastes. The method of advising local authorities and river authorities of the dumping proposed should be considered in terms of the various facilities which local authorities must be able to offer those who require to dump materials. I can see circumstances in which non-dangerous materials of one character should be put obviously and suitably in one location and other types of material in another location, for all sorts of good reasons, including those associated with the environment. Is it proposed, by means of a circular or recommendations, that local authorities should adopt a positive rôle in this respect?
There must be considerable guidance to local authorities, and, although it is not proposed in the Bill, should they not have sanction powers to require certain materials to be dumped in certain locations, rather than using general dumps for all purposes? I am thinking not only of the dangers from toxic materials, but the dangers to water supplies and underground water supplies and strata problems.
I greatly welcome what the Secretary of State said about the high level of technical expertise required to ensure sensible procedures for dumping and disposal.

Mr. Money: Would not my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems to be met is that a mixture of chemicals of different characteristics may provide hazards of its own and that this is one of the things which in the present un controlled system provides the greatest possible danger?

Mr. Jones: I do not know whether I would agree that it is the greatest possible danger, which is the superlative. However, I advocate dumping different materials in different locations, which may be a way to overcome the problem, and giving local authorities some method of sanctions.
My right hon. Friend emphasised the highly technical nature of adequate procedures

for disposal. Very often, local authorities will be unable to carry qualified staff to deal with problems. For that reason, I welcome my right hon. Friend's assurance about the availability of that service.
Industry must dispose of its wastes of all sorts. I support the view that industry must meet the costs of disposal. I disagree with the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Michael Cocks), who said that it should be a general service. It is better that it should be particular to an industry. Each industry should be required to meet the cost of disposal of its residues, adding that expense to its overall production costs.
We shall require much more careful supervision of dumping sites. This will be costly. I hope that guidance will be given to local authorities that this will not be just an addition to the rate precept but that costs will be levied against industries wishing to dump.
Referring to Clause 3, the Secretary of State mentioned that we shall need streamlined procedures and general types of application of the restrictions rather than application to individual cases. Here again, there must be substantial guidance to the public, to industry and to authorities responsible for supervision.
I congratulate again my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. We would all wish to give a fair wind to this Measure.

12.32 a.m.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: On behalf of my constituents, who, as the Secretary of State particularly knows, were grievously affected by one of these dumping incidents, I express my gratitude for the speed with which the right hon. Gentleman has acted in introducing this legislation. I noted that he said that it was intended to be an interim measure. It is because it is an interim measure that it commands the support of myself and my constituents. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Urwin), I represent a coal mining area. My constituency is still pock-marked with old quarries and mine shafts. Such areas become particularly vulnerable to the activities of fly-by-night operators. Those of us who represent such areas perceive that this kind of thing could increase unless the fines are raised.
In the debate on environmental pollution initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mr. Walter Johnson) I said that I was concerned lest the whole emphasis of any legislation might be put solely on the tipper operators. As a rather generalised criticism of the Bill, I believe that it places too much emphasis on those who dispose and not enough on those who supply and manufacture. I accept that the tipper operators particularly play a very important rôle in the disposal of toxic wastes. The findings of the Key Committee lay great stress on the fact that 96 per cent. of toxic wastes are disposed of by some kind of tipper operator. In other words, it is most important that we concentrate a great deal of attention on the activities of those who dispose of toxic wastes. But it is also important to note that the Key Committee stressed that it appears that local authorities do no play a particularly significant rôle in the disposal of toxic wastes. It is because local authorities have not been especially avant guardein playing a rôle of greater foresight in the disposal of these wastes that companies such as the one represented by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine)—I mean no disrespect to him personally—have come to the fore, simply because the public sector has not expanded significantly in the disposal of these kinds of wastes.
Therefore, although I find it appropriate that the Bill should concentrate attention on the disposal of toxic wastes, I only hope that in the legislation which must ultimately come from the Secretary of State we shall spread the net back along the productive process so as more successfully to enmesh the user of dangerous chemicals, together with the producers and suppliers.
As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) said, with any kind of Bill like this we are left with the difficult problem of enforcement. I recognise that there has been some mention of dispute about the interpretation of the penalties and fines Clauses, but it still seems to me that, although we may dispute the size of fine that will be most appropriate to these activities, we shall still have some tremendous enforcement problems because

we are dealing with people who operate mainly by night—people who often do not have the appropriate licences for their lorries, or may tip a load because they are unemployed or can get hold of a lorry. They are the category of operator—the fly-by-night minority—which has unfortunately characterised the road haulage industry. I recognise that it is appropriate at this stage to concentrate on disposal, but there remains the problem of enforcement.
I have been in consultation with the town clerk of the Borough of Nuneaton and many people in my constituency who are concerned with the incident that happened there. I make no bones about the fact that many of my comments this evening—short though I hope they will be—will be influenced by some of the local knowledge that I have gathered. I wonder particularly about the most appropriate definition to give poisonous wastes. It seems to me that, although in Clause 1 (3) we have gone a long way to making the definition as comprehensive as possible, we might have gone even further and been more general by specifying that anything which can be conducive to a public health nuisance, or can ultimately cause a public health nuisance, should be included in the category referred to in Clause 1.
Although the Secretary of State has done his best to make the definition as comprehensive as possible, I am still afraid that in trying to be specific and comprehensive he will allow some substances and some dumpings to get through the net. I should have liked to see an all-embracing definition of harmful wastes, but I recognise that that is a Committee point.
The main burden of my remarks has already been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes), and is contained in the recent report of the Royal Commission. I would have thought that one of the most appropriate ways to deal with this problem—if not in this Bill, certainly in the long term—would be to enable local authorities to register these activities. At the moment if a person stores ice cream the local authority must be told about it; if a person stores sausages the local authority must be told about it; if he handles poisonous substances the local authority or the inspectorate must be told about it


—but it seems that there is still no provision for a continuous system of registration over these chemicals to be exercised by local authorities. I should like to see within the terms of the Bill a system whereby the public health inspectorate must be notified before the process starts. The health departments of the new county councils, or whoever it may be, can exercise a continuous surveillance and a monitoring of the activities of people who are manufacturing or using these dangerous chemicals.
If we have to notify the local authority if we are dealing in scrap metal or ice cream we should at least have a system of continuous registration and monitoring by local authorities in relation to toxic wastes. By this means we would enable local authorities to be in at the start instead of finding out when it is too late. I should like local authorities to be able to keep records from the outset. Local councillors should have easy access to the records, together with members of the public and civic amenity societies, which, fortunately, are increasing in number.
The other serious omission from the Bill is that there is no provision for compensating local authorities. I do not think it is generally known, but the disposal of 36 cwt. of cyanide cost the ratepayers of Nuneaton £664. There is no provision in the Bill for the ratepayers or Borough of Nuneaton to be compensated. It was only because the borough acted so speedily that the cost did not escalate. The borough was involved in a cost of about £100 for hauling the material away and more than £500 for treating it. There should be some system of compensating local authorities for bearing the burdens which they will increasingly have to bear under the legislation.

Mr. Laurance Reed: Would it not be possible for the hon. Gentleman's local authority to charge for the disposal of the material—particularly as the Bill will put a duty on the people disposing of material to take special care?

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: I am grateful for that intervention. What the hon. Gentleman suggests would be considerably easier if the people responsible could be found.
Though we seem to have devised a fairly comprehensive system for the notification

to river authorities and local authorities of the transport of these materials, there is still no clear provision about drivers having to carry weigh bills. Speaking as a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union and a former lorry driver, one of the things that I always had to be careful about was that I had my "tickets" with me. Since other people will have to carry a sheaf of records and people who did not formerly employ secretaries will have to employ them in future, I should have thought that in the Statutory Instruments made under the Bill there should be a clear specification of what the weigh bill carried by the driver should contain.
Furthermore, I wish the Secretary of State to define more clearly in Committee what powers will be given to stop and inspect loads once they are on the move. I accept that an inspection can be carried out, once the wagon has reached the tip and the driver has tipped the load, because we are presumably talking about tipping at a local authority site or at a local authority monitored site. But what powers will be afforded to the police and the Ministry of Transport vehicle examiners to stop loads en route? Surely, at a time when the Department is taking unto itself power almost to arrest drivers of foreign heavy vehicles on sight, we could do something about stopping and examining vehicles driven by our own drivers which contain highly dangerous chemical waste?
When potentially dangerous chemicals are used three days are hardly adequate for notification. If the public health department is fully involved and has to consult the Department of the Environment, it may take longer than three days just to obtain the necessary information on which to decide how to deal with certain materials. There should be longer than three days' notice.
My constituents and I recognise that the Bill is a good start, a good interim piece of legislation, which I hope will be improved upon in Committee. But it is the seedling from which I hope much more comprehensive measures will grow, measures which provide for compulsory and continuous registration, which compensate local authorities for undue financial burdens which they have to suffer and which make sure that we have a comprehensive monitoring process all the way


through, particularly when these materials are on the move.

12.45 p.m.

Mr. Fergus Montgomery: I join in the general welcome that has been given to the Bill. There has been a great deal of public concern about the indiscriminate dumping of poisonous waste. The hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield), like myself, represents a Midlands constituency, and the Midlands has had more than its fair share of reports of indiscriminate dumping in recent months.
I am surprised that it has taken so long to introduce legislation on these lines. The right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin) referred to the report a year ago of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which asked for legislation, but the problem has been with us for a great deal longer than that. The Government hitherto have had no specific or direct control over the tipping of poisonous wastes which present dangers to public health from physical contact and risks of explosion and poisonous fumes. I am glad that the Government in this legislation recognise the seriousness of the situation by the imposition of heavy fines and imprisonment on those who are found guilty of illegally dumping poisonous waste.
Whilst welcoming the Bill, I support many hon. Members on both sides of the House who feel that it does not go far enough. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) that we want to know where the stuff will be dumped, and that we need an adequate number of disposal sites, perhaps on a regional basis, so that people will know exactly where to dump poisonous waste. I hope that such disposal sites will be under the control and supervision of the local authority responsible for refuse disposal. It is also essential that there should be available to anyone who requires it a public register of all the sites.
In his opening speech my hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that he hoped the public would report anyone seen dumping illegally, but the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) pointed out the difficulty of recognising these people. Would my hon. Friend in his reply comment on the suggestion

that vehicles which are used to transport toxic wastes should be required to carry some distinguishing marks to make them readily identifiable so as to assist the public in reporting any illegal tipping.
One point that has not been mentioned in this debate is the question of penalties for hoaxers. Recently a driver alleged that toxic waste had been dumped in Wombourne in my constituency, and this information caused considerable anxiety to many of my constituents who were worried about the effects of any such waste. The local authority immediately investigated the matter, and, after spending a great deal of time and no doubt a fair amount of money on the matter, discovered nothing. Furthermore, the man who had given the information had disappeared. I am told that, if the man were found, he could be charged with committing a public mischief, but there is some doubt whether such a charge would have any standing in a court of law. I am therefore wondering whether there could be some provision in the Bill to meet this point. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to give me some guidance on this matter.
I appreciate that his Bill is an interim measure and that the Government have acted quickly with the co-operation of the Opposition to try to get it on the Statute Book as soon as possible. I should like the legislation to be drawn as tightly as possible because such provisions are vital for public safety. Although I welcome the legislation, I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to allay some of my anxieties about the Bill in its present form.

12.47 a.m.

Mr. David Steel: I agree with the remarks of the hon. Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Montgomery) about the lateness of the Bill—from two points of view.
First, the Government and the Opposition have quite genuinely under-estimated the interest among hon. Members in this legislation and it is ridiculous that the House should be discussing such an important Bill at one o'clock in the morning. I feel that it was an error of judgment to bring it forward at so late an hour.
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman was also right to criticise the lateness in the timing of the legislation. This matter does not go back only to the Report of the


Royal Commission a year ago. It goes right back to the summer of 1964 when the then Government appointed an interdepartmental committee to inquire into the disposal of solid toxic wastes. The committee had a comprehensive remit. It was appointed in July, 1964:
To consider present methods of disposal of solid and semi-solid toxic wastes…in order to ensure that such wastes are disposed of safely and without risk of polluting water supplies and rivers.
It is astonishing that that committee took six years to produce its report, a report which did not appear until 1970, and that it then took another two years before the Government did anything about it.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths): The hon. Gentleman says that after the report was received the Government did nothing about it. Does he not realise that very rapidly after that report was received it was sent to every local authority?

Mr. Steel: Let me go on to be more precise. I quote from recommendation 10 of that committee's report, on page 103:
We do not think the present legislation on toxic solid wastes is adequate".
Two years after that recommendation, this Bill is the first attempt to make sure that legislation is adequate. I welcome this Bill, but I am making the point that it has taken a good number of years for it to come to fruition. In other words, we have been slow to wake up to the dangers.
The hon. Member for Bolton, East (Mr Laurance Reed) made some irrelevant remark about the Young Liberals. I would remind him that the Young Liberals and other young people have done a great deal to alert public opinion on dangers to the environment.
When hon. Members refer to this legislation as being interim, that is a polite word, because it is piecemeal, and the House is never keen to welcome piecemeal legislation. I think that by now we should have had comprehensive legislation dealing with the subject as a whole.
It is perfectly true that when we close one door about the dumping of toxic

material on land we leave an open invitation for people to use alternative methods, especially dumping at sea. In 1971, Mr. Beeby, then President of the Society of Chemical Industry, wrote in Chemicals and Conservation:
The ultimate dumping ground will be the ocean.
In recent months, we have had many complaints, varying from the effect of pollution in the Bristol Channel on life in the channel to a report published over the weekend of a complaint from crab fishermen in the North-East about dumping in the sea by the National Coal Board. As the Bill is drawn, its Long Title makes it impossible to produce Amendments in Committee to deal with anything other than dumping on land specifically.
The hon. Member for Bolton, East was right to refer to the fact that only last month we signed the convention in Oslo to control dumping in the North-East Atlantic. I remember my constituent, Chay Blyth, telling me that when he was rowing across the Atlantic, out of the middle of nowhere he and his companion encountered the most appalling rubbish floating in the sea. This is an important matter. We signed the convention last month, and I would like to have seen us going ahead and dealing with the matter in the same piece of legislation, rather than leaving it for a later date.
Within territorial waters, as distinct from extra-territorial waters, the present system of voluntary consent operated by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food also requires tightening up, and it may be that compulsory measures are needed.
My second point is to support the pleas made by a number of hon. Members about the confidentiality of information and the views of the Royal Commission itself. The Royal Commission made it clear that it had taken evidence from a number of witnesses, who expressed concern about this. It said:
It is a practice which hinders the flow of information needed by responsible people concerned with the abatement of pollution and it leads to risks of mis-understanding on the part of the public which may be harmful to industry and Government alike. That is why we want some public discussion about it.…It is in the public interest that information about wastes should be available not only to the statutory bodies which have a right to


demand it but to research workers and others who can make use of it to improve the environment.
Later, the Royal Commission mentions Members of Parliament.
In an article in New Scientiston 9th March, Mr. Jon Tinker made the point that dealing with all these matters secretly between industry and the local authorities gave rise to a good deal of public misgiving. He pointed out that all these decisions
are essentially political, a balance between what is technically feasible and what is economically possible with public safety and amenity depending on the answer.
I am sorry that this piecemeal legislation does not deal with this matter.
I end with three short constructive points which might be considered within the ambit of the Bill. I recommend the scheme outlined by Sir Frederick Warner, chairman of a committee of the Council of Scientific and Technical Institutes, to make all plants issue an annual pollution report detailing the precise levels of emissions to both air and water, as well as describing what happened to all their wastes. This would require only a fairly simple legislative provision, which might be considered for inclusion in the Bill.
Secondly, I am not certain whether enough care has been taken to establish joint responsibility on both the company producing the waste and the undertaking which is disposing of it. There ought to be an obligation on both the contractor and the person who is giving the contractor the waste to dispose of.
Lastly, it is important that the appeals to the public to come forward and give information about material which has already been dumped should be continued. I wonder whether it would be worth including an amnesty clause in the legislation to encourage more people to come forward.
I wish the Bill success in Committee, on which I hope I shall not have the honour to serve, although a great deal of improvement can be made to it.

1.1 a.m.

Mr. Ernie Money: The whole House will welcome the purpose of the legislation and the vigour and speed with which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has brought it forward. The House has also been

impressed with the obvious care and concern which the ministerial team has taken over this Measure.
I do not intend to detain the House for more than a few minutes in commenting briefly on certain matters which arise from the Bill.
Concern has been expressed about the penalties contained in Clause 1(5). I suggest that that concern probably is aimed not really at the penalties envisaged, because five years' imprisonment is a healthy sanction in anybody's terms, but at the way in which similar types of legislation, particularly some planning and health legislation, have varied in the numbers of prosecutions which have been brought and the sentences which have been passed in different parts of the country. I believe that the sanctions are there. I very much hope that what was said by my right hon. Friend will make a strong impression on those who have to bring the prosecutions and on those who have to try them.
I share the concern expressed by both my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Laurance Reed) and the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) about the tom tiddler's ground which will arise regarding what does not fall into land pollution and does not necessarily fall into sea pollution.
I should like to mention to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, since this matter is already before the Department and is an area of the country well known to him, the special concern of those of us who live in Suffolk regarding the present position of the River Orwell, to which the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Acts do not automatically apply, to which could, unless something is done to bring the full effects of the Act into force, be one of the danger areas for possible dumping.
I should like to mention two matters which are not, and could not be expected to be, contained within the Bill. The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum makes clear that the Bill is intended to relate to dangerous waste as a whole. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to go on from what he has said is only an interim measure to deal with two issues regarding dangerous chemicals which concern many of our constituents.


One concerns dumping of a different kind. It is not just waste dumping, but irresponsible dumping which takes place in different parts of the country, particularly on docks.
In this respect I should like to quote a recent report of Mr. Howard Griffiths, the Chief Fire Officer of Ipswich and Suffolk, who, on that issue, said:
There is also a lot of irresponsible dumping on docks. You are getting an incredible variety of chemicals being unloaded and we have to keep constantly alert to this. The stuff could mix on the quayside and it is often warehoused together. I could show you places where hundreds of chemicals, are stored touching each other. The storekeepers are humble people with no chemical knowledge and one shudders to think what could happen. The risk is there.
I pass from that to the second matter of particular concern to my constituents; namely, the carriage of toxic and corrosive chemicals through the middle of some of our most built-up cities and boroughs. To quote again from the report by Mr. Griffiths, he referred in terms to my constituency in this way:
Ipswich is sitting on a time bomb.
and he went on to repeat some of the risks involved. He then said:
The only answer is to keep these loads away from people. It is a crying scandal that these loads are carried through occupied streets. It is absolutely appalling.
That statement followed a paragraph which said:
Take for example a tank of liquid oxygen—a common thing on the roads. But put it in collision with a petrol tanker and you could wipe out three streets in the explosion. That is the real danger.
He had earlier given a specific example of what happened when there was a small spillage on the road between Felixstowe, which is now one of the biggest container ports in Europe, and Ipswich:
We had a tiny spillage of chemicals on the Felixstowe road—not much more than a pint. It vapourised in a cloud, and two seagulls near it were killed.
That is a frightening thought of how quickly this reaction can happen, and how much more quickly it could affect human life.
I end by referring to the general picture of this matter, which was summed up very well in the leader in the East Anglian Daily Times of Saturday, 4th March, when it said:

Illegal dumping, escaping poisons, dead birds, warehouses stacked with hundreds of chemicals under watchful but unknowing eyes, dangerous cargoes thrusting and jostling through narrow and crowded streets; this is the picture being laid before us, and it is a frightful and alarming one.
We welcome and commend the legislation which my right hon. Friend has brought in, but we hope very much—and I think that I speak for many hon. Members, on both sides of the House, who have anxieties on this score—that this is the start of what will be a full package deal on this subject.

1.7 a.m.

Mr. Gordon A. T. Bagier: The fact that at this time of the morning so many hon. Members are still waiting to speak to a Bill which was introduced as late in the day as it was shows the importance of this Measure. I welcome the Bill and the fact that the Secretary of State is here to launch it on its way.
My remarks will be brief, because my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Urwin) has dealt with some of our local issues.
Why do we have poisonous waste at all? I wonder how much research has been done by industry, and how much pressure has been put on industry, to ensure that there is no need to have poisonous toxic waste to get rid of at all? Having asked that question, I assume the answer is that there is some left which had to be got rid of. There might be quite a considerable amount which can be made harmless, and I hope that what we are talking about tonight is the sort of stuff which cannot be dumped on an open tip.
The reason for this debate and this emergency legislation is that on open tips "midnight cowboys" have dumped poisonous toxic waste which can be dangerous to children. All of a sudden Parliament, with all its power, has had to be jolted into action to try to deal with that situation.
The hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) talked about the number of pits open, the number of dumping spots left open, the number of easily accessible places at which stuff can be got rid of by anybody who has no conscience. What the House is trying to do is to close the loopholes. What


we have to do, and what I hope the Secretary of State is trying to do by the Bill, is to allay public fears about what has been going on. It is a great pity that the situation which is arising in a constituency adjoining mine—indeed, it will become my constituency after the boundary changes—should be occurring against the background of a Bill of this nature and the fears which exist.
Negotiations have been going on for a considerable time about getting rid of toxic wastes by using natural resources—like ex-pits. There must be Government-approved central deposit spots, and there should be control at source and en route; and there should be a licensing system. Is it no good lurking around the tips trying to catch a lorry driver. He must be caught en route, and if he does not have a licence he must be prosecuted as if he were going to tip illegally.
Could these central tips be properly policed? At Silksworth colliery adjoining my constituency there is a seam 2,000 feet deep in which a reputable firm wants to put liquid toxic waste, which it claims can do no harm to water supplies or environment. It says that even higher seams can be used to store material in drums. Also, in an area with tragic unemployment figures, the firm says that it can employ 100 people regularly at the dump.
But too often regions like mine are looked on as the dumping spots for industrial waste. The Bill puts the responsibility on local authorities, which vary in size and in the quality of officials employed at this level. Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the local authority should be the be-all and end-all? I hope he is prepared to take much more responsibility than that.
The firm which wants to do the dumping in my constituency has had a lot of experience of this. It claims:
The mine is not a sump, allowing liquids to leak away into surounding strata and water tables. Because it is so safe, we have been given the only general consent to underground waste disposal yet granted under the 1963 Act. Such an asset is too valuable to waste on unselective dumping. We reserve it for acids, toxic liquids and difficult sludges. Already it swallows millions of gallons a month of prepared effluent. The capacity will last for 50 years, even at an accelerated rate of usage.

These are extremely rosy claims, and in saying that I do not seek to be sarcastic. But the claims must be underlined by facts, or thousands of people who live around these potential dumping spots will live in fear that the toxic material will rise and contaminate the water supply or have disastrous effects on the rivers. I can envisage that central dumping of this kind could be a definite asset. If it is controlled and policed there will not be any dumping of the kind that led to the emergency presentation of the Bill.
I am asking only that I and the people I represent shall be convinced that if dumping is to be handled in this way it is done safely and with no danger to my area.

1.16 a.m.

Mrs. Peggy Fenner: Most hon. Members are concerned about the deposit of toxic wastes such as cyanide. While I welcome the Bill, I understand that it is an interim Measure that has been introduced with commendable alacrity to deal with a very difficult situation which has been highlighted over recent months by the discovery of cyanide waste deposits.
I wish to deal with what may be a much smaller hazard. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will recollect the urgent communication that I had with his Department about the dumping of drugs in my area. There were about 3,500 of them. Half were iron tablets and the remainder were sleeping tablets. They hardly fell into the category of "poisonous, noxious or polluting" waste but any 10 of them taken by children could have proved fatal. I therefore considered the matter to be one of public concern. I take heart from Clause 1(4)(b), which says that the likelihood of containers in which the waste is deposited being tampered with by children will be a relevant consideration for the prosecution, but I wish to be reassured that the term "waste" is used in its widest sense and that it includes drugs, whether defective or surplus to requirements.
My right hon. Friend has referred specifically to wastes from the paper and board industry, from the food processing industry, and from the farming industry. I recognise that he cannot refer to all the different industries, but he did not mention wastes from the pharmaceutical


industry. I shall be very happy to receive an assurance on this or, if the Bill does not cover them, that at least the point may be considered in Committee and in any further and more comprehensive legislation on the subject.

1.20 a.m.

Mr. David Clark: I shall follow the example of the hon. Member for Merton and Morden (Miss Fookes) and be brief.
I take issue with the hon. Lady when she commends her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on the speed with which he introduced the Bill. I want to be constructive. This has been a very constructive debate, in which hon. Members on both sides have suggested how the Bill could be made more effective. But we should not exaggerate the speed with which the Bill has been introduced. I feel that the Secretary of State has been guilty of delay. After all, he had the Key Committee Report on his desk 18 months ago, and on page 7of the Second Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution we read that the Royal Commission warned the right hon. Gentleman last July of the emergency situation.

Mr. Peter Walker: The Chairman of the Royal Commission says that he has no criticism of the speed with which my Department has dealt with the problem. Last April I published the Government's attitude to it and no hon. Member, none of the local authority associations, or anyone on the Royal Commission then criticised my view that the matter should come under the reform of local government in 1974. When we had discussions with the Royal Commission we agreed to take earlier action, which, whether or not the Opposition gave us facilities, we should have done.

Mr. Clark: The right hon. Gentleman is entitled to his views, but there has been concern about the delay. On page 7 of the Royal Commission Report we read:
We recommended in July 1971, and again more recently, the urgent introduction of a measure of control in advance of comprehensive legislation.
That was nine months ago. Certain hon. Members consider that the Bill has been introduced in response to a crisis situation, and that it should have been introduced before.

Mr. Peter Walker: I disclosed earlier this evening that in January I wrote to the Chairman of the Royal Commission agreeing that we would introduce legislation to come into immediate effect under local government provisions. He welcomed this and considered that it was adequate.

Mr. Clark: I accept the right hon. Gentleman's contention that the matter is better dealt with when we have the new reformed system of local government, but I still contend that the legislation is urgent. I do not want to become involved in an argument with the right hon. Gentleman, because by and large I agree with his Bill, but there are doubts that must be expressed.
The Bill rightly sets out to allay a certain amount of public disquiet, but it would be wrong to exaggerate its importance. As the Secretary of State has said, it is only an interim Measure. Other hon. Members have called it a piecemeal Measure. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman's use of the word "interim", and support the Bill as the first in a series of Measures on these lines.
As I understand it, the result of the Bill will be that we shall know where most of the toxic waste is dumped, though not very much else. That is a step forward, but let us not exaggerate the improvement. The toxic waste will still be there. It can still damage our environment if it can escape from the tips, or if the tips are not constructed to deal with it. By locating the danger we have not necessarily tackled it. In that sense I would describe the Bill as perhaps a negative Measure. I do not deny the need for it, but much more positive steps will have to be taken. For example, the Key Committee suggests that a non-statutory technical advisory committee should be set up to examine the problems. The Key Report is one of the most comprehensive, detailed and sensible reports that I have seen on the environment and pollution, and that is one of its recommendations that should have been accepted.
As I understand it, the local authority and the river authority will have three days' notification of the proposed move of toxic waste. What happens if the river


authority is not happy about the movement? The waste may be going to a registered and recognised tip, but there may be in it some form of chemical which the river authority feels could endanger some of the watershed in the area, not immediately but perhaps in the slightly longer term. Is there to be any power in the river authority or the local authority to apply for an injunction to stop that waste being dumped? On my reading, all that the Bill says is that the river authority must have three days' notice, but surely the worth of such notification is reduced without the power that I suggest.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: If the river authority or local authority were to telephone or send a post card to the firm in question, advising it that there was likely to bean environmental hazard as described in the Bill and that its directors might find themselves in gaol or subject to an unlimited fine, is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that that is not a powerful disincentive to tip?

Mr. Clark: Obviously it is, but we are talking of statutory control over toxic waste, and I suggest that there is a case for empowering the river authority to take out an injunction in such cases. I am putting this suggestion forward as a means of strengthening the Bill.
I accept the right hon. Gentleman's premise that this matter will be easier to deal with under the reformed local government, but I am disturbed about the responsibilities of county district councils. I know some of these small urban district councils intimately; some have populations of 5,000 or less, although others have very much more. I doubt whether they have the qualified staff to be responsible for the efficient enforcement of the Bill. I accept that they can apply to the Department, whose technical officers will speedily come to their aid, but with only three days' notice of disposal I am not sure that there is time enough for that.
I do not believe that the vast majority of urban district councils have the staff to tackle this aspect of the Bill. In some of the urban districts in my constituency, a penny rate yields only just over £1,000, and so one can appreciate some of the financial difficulties involved.

Would it be possible to strengthen the regional teams of the Department, especially on the technical side, so that the advisers could deal more speedily with local problems?
We are all seeking a better organised and coherent system of toxic waste disposal, which will inevitably mean much more transportation of toxic waste. This in itself could create difficulties. I urge the right hon. Gentleman to consider the possibility of following the American procedure in the transportation of toxic waste. On their lorries they have what are called "chem-cards" when crossing State lines. These cards state the type of load being carried, the type of action to take if there is spillage and the action that the fire brigade should take if there is a fire. We could be creating another problem in our attempts to solve this one. It is the duty of any Government to try to keep up with developments and to allay the fears of the general public.
I stress that in spite of my rather hostile beginning I am trying to be helpful and to strengthen the Bill, which I welcome as the first of a series of Measures to make our whole system much more coherent.

1.30 a.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: After all this, I feel rather like the bad fairy who makes a rather sour appearance at the banquet, for I am less than impressed by several aspects of the Bill. Before we parade the virtues of the Secretary of State for bringing the Bill forward it ought to be said that it would have been something approaching dereliction of duty if he had not done so. I am always for giving credit where credit is due, but I find it astonishing that some of my colleagues should go on congratulating the Secretary of State on doing something failure to do which would have been approaching a scandal.
Before we enter any chorus of welcome for the Bill we have to sort out the whole subject of secrecy, raised by the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) and others. I had the impression that this matter would be dealt with when the Secretary of State made his announcement during the debate, when the subject was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mr. Walter Johnson).
The truth that we have to face is that too often prevention of pollution Acts have functioned as Acts for the protection of polluters. No one has willed it, but that is how it has worked out. It is not that officials are corrupt or incompetent. On the contrary, it is simply that the data of individual emissions are guarded more closely than military secrets, and we know why that has arisen. It has come about because of industrial competition, and that is a subject to which we should turn our attention.
Publication of consent conditions or the results of tests of samples of trade effluent do not appear to be specifically forbidden by the Public Health Acts. However, the details are clearly kept secret and the justification appears to be in Section 287 of the 1936 Act. It is this that threatens three months' imprisonment if a local official
discloses to any person any information obtained by him in the factory, workshop or workplace with regard to any manufacturing process or trade secret".
It was Kenneth Tyler of the Association of Public Health Inspectors who said:
An inspector would be a very unwise man if he started releasing details of individual discharges to sewers".
The C.B.I, has on record research stating that it would be possible for a competitor to gain useful information from effluent.
It is just conceivable that analysis of works effluent could give a competitor a clue to a vital catalyst in a new process. It has to be admitted that this is true, as the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) will know from his work in this respect, but most chemists regard as ludicrous the notion of industrial secrets leaking down some kind of plug hole. A major competitor who is really interested in a rival's wastes is more likely to row stealthily up river on a dark night than to rely on the meagre information that might be held in a local authority's books. If one firm is really interested in the trade secrets of another, the last thing that it will do is to examine the books of the local authority, because they will be far too vague for that purpose. Therefore, if the worry is about industrial competition, whatever was the position 50 years ago, in the light of modern technological advance that is no serious worry today.
Pollution officers have the power to take samples of industrial discharges to make sure that they are complying with secret limits, but any analysis of the samples remains strictly confidential. Nothing that I have heard in the last four hours suggests that the Bill will create any differences in the confidential requirements imposed by law. The regulating agency may require the factory to monitor air or water quality downwind or downstream of the discharge, but the measurements are hidden away in Government files. The House has a duty to ask why. As yet there has been no convincing explanation as to why there should be this degree of confidentiality.
Flexibility and co-operation are the watchwords of the Alkali Inspectorate, but do flexible officials sometimes place public health and safety at risk rather than jeopardise their co-operative relationship with the polluters? We are unable to judge, because the facts are withheld from us. Therefore, I can give only an impression. It is an impression shared by a number of my colleagues on the New Scientistand a number of others in the field, namely, that conditions vary from one part of the country to another; that in some parts of the country the Alkali Inspectorate is excellent but in other instances there is a degree of cosiness between inspectors and the industry that is rather alarming.
If it is thought that I am exaggerating, let us consider what happened at Avon mouth, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Michael Cocks) will know very well. If there is a lesson to be learned from Avon mouth, it is in the incredible story of how three sets of organisations have merged into one when they should have been adopting a critical posture towards each other. Therefore, what I am saying is not just theory; it is the reality that has come to light at Avonmouth. In the Second Reading debate it behoves us to ask certain questions about the Alkali Inspectorate.
From time to time over the last 10 years in the House I have heard hon. Members on both sides pay tribute to the great work of the Alkali Inspectorate. I have always taken it in one sense that this was a marvellous body because it could go unchallenged, and undoubtedly many alkali inspectors do a marvellous job. But, following the R.T.Z. fiasco,


we do not know. The Chief Alkali Inspector says:
I am a great believer in informing the public, but not alarming them.
I suppose that that is a fair enough point of view, but the situation in industry is that although shop stewards and convenors know that the alkali inspector has been in the plant they never see him.
I refer to the report of the Committee under the chairmanship of our late colleague, Arthur Skeffington, formerly the Member for Hayes and Harlington, asking for more public participation in matters such as these. Graham Searle, of "Friends of the Earth"—I do not agree with everything that organisation suggests—says
Everyone says that the Alkali Inspectorate are very good, but how can we tell if they don't publish any figures?
Therefore, the time has come, if we are introducing emergency of long term legislation, to reconsider the whole framework within which the Alkali Inspectorate is working.
The defenders of the status quo claim that pollution judgments are best made in a spirit of cool, scientific detachment and the absence of emotional public clamour. It is true that such decisions are essentially political, and that a balance must be struck between the technically feasible and the economically possible, but the notion that the Government alone are clever enough to evaluate pollution problems and the general public is too ignorant and too stupid to understand them is both paternalistic and, in my view, rather offensive.
I now come to the case of the Trent river authority, which recently issued a special memorandum to its staff reminding it that the only people who were entitled to see the register were those with a property interest at the point of discharge. The polluter or his landlord is entitled to know the level of discharge that the river authority considers satisfactory, but the farmer whose cows drink out of the river, the man who owns the fishing rights downstream, or the group of scientists from the local university cannot look at the register because they are not what the lawyers call "interested parties".
Here I want to refer to the report of my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn

and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Lena Jeger) which stated that three-quarters of our sewage outfall fails to conform with river authority consent conditions. Therefore there is an overwhelming case for a great deal more of what the Prime Minister calls "open government". I can understand that in the military field there are difficulties, but in pollution I do not see what we have to lose by being frank with each other.
It is true that river authorities could install their own recording equipment, but they would have to pay for it, and there is no way in which, at the moment, costs could be recovered from the polluter. Since river authorities are scandalously short of scientific equipment they are unlikely to let the opportunity go by of getting industry to pay instead. As the Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office, knows this problem becomes greater in those areas such as our own, which are desperate to attract industry and do not want to ask too many pollution questions of either existing industry or incoming industry. We know how desperate we are to attract employment to our areas. Some local authorities and Members of Parliament—and I confess to being one—are not likely to start asking questions that may be considered offensive to industry which they are trying to attract to their areas. This is a national problem, and it is a delicate issue for local authorities. River quality could only benefit if boards were able to operate somewhat less furtively.
Something must be said about trade effluents in sewers. Under the Public Health Acts of 1936 and 1937 local authorities are obliged to accept trade effluents, but they may impose conditions as to chemical and physical quality. Since some pollutants—heavy metals, for example—can poison the microflora which degrade sewage in treatment plants, unexpected contamination can cause the sewage works to discharge virtually raw sewage, through its outfall into the river.
Here we come to the issue of clandestine pollution, when control benefits nobody but the polluter. The company says that it
does not believe that the disclosure of the nature of our effluent would give any information to our competitors".
I go along with that view, because I feel that it is an enlightened one. In spite of


the Royal Commissions report, which urges an end to unnecessary secrecy, the Secretary of State in his Bill has rolled out some new legal gags to prevent the public knowing what pollution is occurring.
That is fair comment; at least it is a case that must be answered. I realise that this Measure will be replaced by more permanent legislation, but in many ways it represents an eating of ministerial words. Only six weeks ago the Undersecretary of State for the Environment was insisting that there was neither the need nor the parliamentary time for emergency action. Let us face it; recent events have brought forward this legislation.
The question arises of the most blatant dumping of indisputable poisons like sodium cyanide. Moreover, the unscrupulous industrialist has no doubt already spotted that he can avoid the penalty of five years' imprisonment by throwing his waste in the nearest river, which risks a fine of only £200. Here I come to the issue raised by the hon. Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Laurance Reed), because even under the Bill a number of industrialists will go on making the calculation that it pays them to take the risk of incurring fines. It is no good the Under-Secretary's screwing up his eyebrows and saying "No" under his breath. This is the fact as I understand it, and it is the fact as other people understand it, and we had better get it straight.
The guts of the Bill are in the requirement on companies to give district councils and river authorities three days' notice of what they propose to deposit and where it is to go. This information must go to the authority whose area it leaves and to those into whose area it is sent. Similarly, tip operators must file details of any toxic wastes within three days of their receipt. These powers do not impose any control. That point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. David Clark). The question is how many rural district councils, when they receive a statutory notice that someone proposes to abandon 10 gallons of mercury, for example, in an old chalk pit, will be able to assess the danger in the time given? I agree with my hon. Friend.
It is all very well for the Secretary of State to say that all the resources of the Department will be at the disposal of the local authority, but I understand that the resources of the Department are somewhat limited in this regard. A number of local authorities might all at the same time ask for help from the Department. Is the Department sure that it can carry out the Secretary of State's promise? Perhaps I can be convinced that it can, but that question needs answering.
All the local authority can do is prosecute after the event, and it will then have to prove that the substance dumped did
subject persons or animals to material risk of death, injury or impairment of health…
The cost in time and lawyers' and expert witnesses' fees is likely to be more than most local authorities would risk. This is a subject which has not been properly tackled. In a few years the Department plans more comprehensive dumping laws requiring that advance permission has to be sought before hazardous wastes are tipped and enabling local authorities to refuse consent if they feel that waste should be treated chemically first. Therefore, the present Bill may be no more than a useful stopgap whose main advantage is to provide data on what is dumped and where.
Although unfortunately Clause 4(4) instructs local authorities to keep such records, it does not state that they must be open for public inspection. Worse, Clause 4(2) invokes the stringent power of Section 287 of the Public Health Act, 1936, which threatens local officials with three months' imprisonment for disclosing "trade secrets." In practice, this means that the secrets will be kept. Once again, legal sanctions are being wheeled out to prevent scientists and conservation groups from making an independent evaluation of a pollution hazard. Once again a paternalistic Government are gagging public servants to make sure that we do not learn facts that might alarm us. Once again Whitehall has bowed to C.B.I. pressure and agreed that polluters should be spared public embarrassment.
Our main concern is with Clause 4. Paragraphs 3 to 10 of the Second Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution criticises unnecessary secrecy with pollution data, mentioning in particular the way in which Section 12 of the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution)


Act, 1961, prohibited river authorities from disclosing details of individual discharges to waters. Exactly the same situation is now to be created for poisonous wastes. Clause 4 makes Section 287 of the Public Health Act, 1936, form part of the new Bill. This Section allows local authority inspectors to enter premises, if necessary under warrant, to find out whether an offence is being committed or regulations are being complied with. Subsection (5) makes it an offence for an inspector to disclose to the public any manufacturing process or trade secret that he may acquire under that Section, which has been used to force local authorities to keep confidential details of individual discharges of trade effluents into public sewers.
Clause 4 requires local authorities to keep records of what waste has been deposited in their area, but it does not say that the records must be open to public inspection. In practice, therefore, the absence of a public inspection Clause will mean that Clauses 4(2) and 4(4) of the Bill will be read together as prohibiting public disclosure of the records. Local authorities will know what waste is being deposited but will be prohibited from letting such information be known.
Since the local authorities concerned until 1974 will be county district councils—and we have to deal with the interim period—they will in practice be totally incompetent to determine whether or not wastes which have been deposited are dangerous. The only way of ensuring that a dangerous situation has at least a fighting chance of coming to public notice is to have the records open to inspection. Then at least a local university team or conservation group will be able to raise the alarm. In his statement on the Royal Commission report the Secretary of State hedged as to whether he accepted the Ashby recommendation that there should be less secrecy. The way in which the Bill appears and what the Secretary of State has said make it clear that he rejects this point.
I do not apologise for keeping the House even at this hour for some length of time, because this is a matter of considerable consequence If it is not dealt with tonight it will be too late. Like the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles and my hon. Friends the

Members for Colne Valley, Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield) and Bristol, South, I feel there is an issue here on which the Secretary of State should come clean and come clean now.

1.53 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths): This has been a wide-ranging debate in which 18 or 19 hon. Members have spoken after 10 o'clock. There has been a central agreement among all hon. Members and between the two Front Benches that the Bill is necessary, tough, and needs to be passed quickly. In so far as there have been criticisms or dissent they have been mainly in the direction of seeking to make the Bill more comprehensive or tougher or to give greater powers. There has been no suggestion that the Bill is an over-reaction to the present situation.
There is one phrase which, surprisingly, has not caught the attention of hon. Members, and that is the phrase "environmental hazard". This is a new phrase in the English language and it is a new legal conception. In bringing it forward my right hon. Friend has created a precedent in that he is saying that Parliament will not accept that no longer shall there be in this country a freedom for industry or anyone else to create hazards to the environment of the public. The Bill goes on to demonstrate that those who create environmental hazards shall, if found guilty, be subject to severe penalties.
I want to deal with one idea that has affected some speeches, namely, that the Bill does not require local authorities to stop people tipping toxic wastes. What it does is to provide local authorities with a means of finding out what toxic waste, or waste of any kind, is being deposited. The penalties arise simply because private persons or, indeed, local authorities, cause or permit such tipping to take place. The mere fact that an industrialist or contractor knows that he is liable to unlimited fines, or up to five years' imprisonment, for causing an environmental hazard is of itself a real deterrent to these practices which we all want to stop.
The right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin), in his helpful speech, said that he was glad that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had acted with speed, and hoped in the near


future to see more comprehensive legislation. The right hon. Gentleman's criticism was that he wanted us to go more quickly. I am sure that he recognises that the problem of pollution and of poisonous wastes of every kind is a never-ending problem. My right hon. Friend intends to make all the effiorts he can to bring forward improvements in the powers and regulations which are appropriate to deal with the situation. There will be opportunities in the Bill on the reorganisation of the water services which will have to be brought forward before long. I know that my right hon. Friend intends to make use of that opportunity to improve pollution control. Similarly, in the case of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill which no doubt will be necessary, the right hon. Gentleman will, I hope, find himself locked in friendly debate with my right hon. Friend. There again, there may be additional opportunities. In respect of noise abatement, too, additional improvements will be brought forward where necessary. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that it is the Government's intention to help wherever it is possible to do so.
The right hon. Gentleman raised a number of specific points. I can deal directly only with penalties and his remark about confidentiality. The House has been a little less than appreciative, of how tough these penalties are. The substantive offence in the Bill, namely, the creation of an environmental hazard by the deposit of poisonous waste, will on summary conviction in the magistrates' court, attract the maximum possible penalty that such a court can impose, namely £400—which some hon. Members think inadequate—or imprisonment up to six months. A more serious matter would be dealt with on indictment in a Crown Court, in which case there can be an unlimited fine—and that word "unlimited" must convey a great deal—or five years' imprisonment. I suggest that those fines, or threats of imprisonment, are very serious matters.

Mr. David Steel: Does the Bill as drafted cover the situation involving a person who tips toxic waste in the lower reaches of a river, not on land? Would that attract not the higher penalty but the lower one already provided for in existing legislation?

Mr. Griffiths: The short answer is that the Bill includes land and land which is covered with water. But on the specific point about the estuary, the hon. Gentleman will know of my right hon. Friend's comments on the Jeger Report and the clear intention of my Department to bring in the necessary additional controls in respect of discharges into estuaries.
On the confidentiality point raised by the right hon. Member for Deptford and others, I can say little other than that it is a complex matter but one in respect of which my right hon. Friend is at present in consultation with industry and local authorities in order to meet all the difficult matters that need action. I am sure that when these consultations are complete my right hon. Friend will want to make a statement in the House.

Mr. Dalyell: Will that be soon?

Mr. Griffiths: As soon as possible.
The hon. Members for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Urwin) and Sunderland, South (Mr. Bagier) referred to the problem at Silksworth pit. I shall read in the morning what they have said, and I shall see whether there is any matter affecting my Department about which we can help. This is a problem with which I am familiar, and I undertake to see whether there is anything that we can do to help.

Mr. Bagier: It is most important to allay public fears if there is no danger from putting this waste into the pit. Bearing in mind that it is costing £2,000 a week to keep the pit open, if the hon. Gentleman can help in allaying those public fears will he please do so?

Mr. Griffiths: I am not in a position to allay public fears without first finding out a great deal more about the situation. This is a matter partly for the National Coal Board and partly for the local authority. In so far as my Department is concerned, I will look into the position and will let the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring know if there is anything helpful that we can do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) said that the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors welcomed the Bill. I am very glad to hear that. My hon.


Friend made one or two criticisms of it. He referred especially to the fact that the Bill does not include a list of the materials which are poisonous, noxious or polluting. However, the basis of the Bill is that all wastes shall be regarded as notifiable save where they are exempted by the orders of my right hon. Friend. It is that way round which applies here rather than the way round to which my hon. Friend referred.
My hon. Friend spoke of the need to provide sites for toxic wastes, and that is sensible.
But the new county councils in England after local government reform will have the Statutory responsibility for waste disposal and will be able to consider the use of sites to deal with this problem.

Mr. Urwin: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the representations made by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine), will he bear in mind that there is a real difficulty imposed upon local authorities in the Bill about the designation of sites for waste disposal? Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind also the point made by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East about the disadvantages which may flow to the community at large from the use of disused collieries for the storage of this waste?

Mr. Griffiths: Yes. I can only repeat that I will look into this matter. I am well aware that if waste is put into a colliery there is a danger that some of the aquifers will become polluted. Equally, sometimes local authorities find it difficult to select a satisfactory site. This is a matter of geology, and of many other factors. The fact is that the new local authorities, with greater powers, resources and wider areas, will have the statutory obligation to accept responsibility for the disposal of wastes in their areas, and I have every reason to suppose that they will discharge that obligation very effectively.

Sir Bernard Braine: Sir Bernard Braine rose—

Mr. Griffiths: I was about to deal with my hon. Friend's point. His concern was to see a better documentation of wastes—

Sir Bernard Braine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, because

I want to press him on the point with which he has just dealt. Does he appreciate that there is no shortage of sites; there is only a shortage of the will, on the part of local authorities, to approve such sites? Unless this nettle is grasped then, between the Bill becoming law and the new authorities coming into existence there will be a problem which will make this new Measure very difficult to operate.

Mr. Griffiths: That is my hon. Friend's view, and he is perfectly entitled to it. I recognise that some local authorities are reluctant to give planning permissions, for reasons which he will know just as well as I do. I think that my hon. Friend does not help his cause by suggesting that somehow, as a result of the passing of the Bill, of which he approves, there will suddenly be created a situation in which industry will no longer be able to get rid of its wastes.

Sir Bernard Braine: There is a problem now, and I am asking the Government to recognise that it exists.

Mr. Griffiths: I recognise that more sites are required. However, it is not just a matter of sites; it is a matter of incinerators, pulverisers and all the many techniques which can be applied to the disposal of waste.
Unlike my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Michael Cocks) wanted the local authorities to put in public facilities at no cost to industry to dispose of waste on a large scale. I can understand his purpose. However, one result of doing that would be that the industrialist would no longer have an incentive to do what we all want him to do; namely, reduce the pollution of the waste on his own site before getting rid of it. If free processing were to be provided by the local authorities, no polluter would pay to do it on his own site; he would remove it to the local authority site and expect to have it done for him.
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Simeons) asked whether the Bill covered accidental pollutions. Indeed it does. Nothing in the language of the Bill requires the act of polluting to be wilful. If it takes place, it is within the scope of the Bill.
The hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) suggested that the public should be invited to assist.


This is a matter which my right hon. Friend and I would always wish to see.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) gave some of the figures. He pointed out, quite accurately, that 20 million tons of waste has to be disposed of each year, of which about 200,000 tons is toxic. My hon. Friend made two points, with both of which I agreed: first, that there is a positive role for local authorities to play in this matter—I am sure that that is right—but, secondly, that they must have guidance. They have already had the circular which my right hon. Friend sent out in April 1971. Indeed, if all of them had exercised the advice given therein, some of the problems which have arisen recently would not have occurred. However, there is no doubt that, following the Bill, a further circular will be necessary, and I know that my right hon. Friend intends to provide it.
The hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield), who has spoken on this subject many times, was worried that there was no provision for local authorities to be compensated for getting rid of industrial wastes. He also raised the point that some local authorities, as he judged, were not sufficiently equipped to monitor river, air and noise pollution. The Department of the Environment is actively involved in monitoring these matters. The River Pollution Survey is part of it, the Alkali Inspectorate is constantly concerned with air conditions, and more and more we are measuring noise.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: My point about local authorities is not that they are inadequately equipped but that it would be better if local authorities could be notified from the very start that one of these dangerous processes was about to commence so that they could monitor it and watch it right the way through.

Mr. Griffiths: I take the hon. Gentleman's point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Montgomery) was concerned about the possibility of vehicles which are used to transport toxic wastes being specially marked. One of the problems here is that very often the vehicles in question pick up a certain type of material on one day and different types of

materials on another. Indeed, sometimes they go from one place to another and collect a whole series of different types of commodity during one trip. However, I think my hon. Friend has something of a point, and I should like to consider it.
The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) said that we were a little late with the Bill. I think my right hon. Friend dealt with that in his earlier submissions. On a more serious point, the hon. Gentleman said that he would like all industrialists to issue an annual pollution report. That is an attractive idea, but wherever an industry is putting effluent into a river, effectively it is being monitored and is making a report anyway.
As regards the Alkali Inspectorate, there is regular monitoring to ensure that the "best practicable means" are being used by industry in its emissions to air.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Fenner) raised with great vigour an issue which she raised some weeks ago with my right hon. Friend. She referred to some drugs that were dumped in her constituency and asked for an assurance that the Bill would catch an incident of that kind. I assure her that it would. It would in so far as the dumping would
subject persons or animals to material risk of death, injury or impairment of health".
The Clause which contains that phrase would catch the kind of incident to which my hon. Friend referred and which she has pressed so vigorously on behalf of her constituents.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money) raised the question of docks and transport. I can tell him that the Home Office Standing Advisory Committee on Dangerous Substances will, as soon as possible, be giving consideration to further regulations covering the carriage of other classes of dangerous goods, such as gases, oxidising agents and organic peroxides. Moreover, it is contemplating a code of practice for the whole range of toxic substances carried on vehicles.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: While the hon. Gentleman is considering that, will he consider having on vehicles some device for dealing with the dangers that can arise, such as fire?

Mr. Griffiths: Yes, and I believe that that is being discussed in a European context in connection with the incident at Felixstowe, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich referred. I think that there is much to be said for looking at that very carefully, indeed.
This has been a wide-ranging debate. The hour is late, but the agreement is, I think, warm and firm. No doubt in Committee we shall want to look carefully at many of the points which have been raised, but I think the House will agree that my right hon. Friend faced with a national need to take action, has brought before the House a Bill which is strong and tough and one which the House as a whole, without regard to political differences between the two sides, will wish to see through its various stages as quickly as it can.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Jopling.]

Committee this day.

Orders of the Day — ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Jopling.]

Orders of the Day — HOSPITAL SERVICES (NELSON AND COLNE)

2.15 a.m.

Mr. David Waddington: I make no apology for raising what at first sight may appear to be a narrow parochial issue, because on closer examination it will be seen that far-reaching considerations of Government policy are involved.
The Reedyford Memorial Hospital at Nelson was built between the wars and is not called a memorial hospital for nothing. It is, in fact, a war memorial hospital, the cost of building which was met by public subscription—by ordinary people giving a few coppers a week out of their wages because they felt that there could be no more fitting memorial to the dead and wounded than a hospital.
As the years have gone by the Reedyford has never failed to attract massive support from voluntary organisations in

the town. The annual hospital gala, in particular, has always been one of the most important events in the calendar.
It is against this background that the Minister will understand with what dismay there was greeted the publication in the local paper of a statement by the Burnley and District Hospital Management Committee to the effect that it had always been intended to close Reedyford eventually and replace it with new wards at the Burnley General Hospital, and that, as it now looked as if Reedyford would have to be demolished to make room for an intersection on the Calder Valley Road, the closure that had always been planned would be brought forward.
I have long campaigned for the Calder Valley Road and for a fast route between the M6 and North-East Lancashire. I have always believed that it is vital for the future of Nelson and Colne that road communications in the area should be improved, and that without such an improvement there is little chance of our attracting into the area the new industry that we so badly need.
When, therefore, it became apparent that the building of the new road would involve the demolition of the hospital it might have been tempting to argue that it would be folly to make too much of a fuss about the hospital in case it delayed construction of the road. I have never looked on the matter in that way. The issue is very simple: is there a case for a hospital in Nelson? If there is, yet the old Reedyford has to be demolished to make room for the road, there is a case for ensuring that a new Reedyford rises out of the ashes of the old.
Some people have already said that this is a lot of fuss about nothing—that the advantages of a large general hospital are manifest, and that in any event people in Nelson are not entitled to talk about it as "their" hospital, because only a minority of the patients treated there actually live in the town. The fact that, because of what some may consider the eccentric way in which things have been arranged by the hospital management committee, Nelson people travel to Burnley for treatment and vice versadoes not remove the right of people in Nelson to look upon it as their hospital, standing as it does in the town, and paid for by the people of Nelson. They feel very strongly that there should always be a


place for a local hospital, and they have no enthusiasm whatever for a plan which will mean more people having to make long and expensive journeys to obtain treatment or to visit friends or relatives who have been taken ill, or who have had to undergo operations. They know—because it has also been announced—that if the hospital management committee gets its way on this question it will not be long before Hartley hospital, in Colne, is also closed. We will finish up with people living in Earby, Barnoldswick and Trawden having to travel as far as Burnley for treatment.
A year or so ago we had the closure of Reedyford as an accident unit. Now the argument is levelled against us that Reedyford is no longer providing the sort of facilities that justify its continuance as a local hospital. If Reedyford goes it will be that much easier for the hospital management committee to argue for the closure of Hartley Hospital—and so we go on.
Far from going in for more and more centralisation, the planners ought seriously to reconsider some of the steps that they have taken, like the closure of Reedyford as an accident hospital. If we cannot get an in-patient hospital at Nelson we are at least entitled to ask the powers-that-be to consider setting up some sort of unit in the town to deal with accidents and out-patients.
I freely admit that this is in the nature of an exploratory exercise. At this stage I want to learn something more of the Department's thinking on these problems, and to prod the Secretary of State into developing a little further certain ideas which he threw out during a speech at Goodmayes Hospital on 8th February. I was encouraged that in that speech he said that he had been taking a far-reaching look at the place of the local hospital, and said that he was:
a healthy sceptic on over-concentration".
He made it plain on that occasion that he did not subscribe to the view that the day of the local hospital was gone for ever, and he pointed out that there was a need for community hospitals for patients who did not need all the expensive facilities of a district general hospital. He said that in the local hospitals patients could be looked after nearer their homes and their friends, benefiting from the good will and service

—whether voluntary or paid—that can be focused on a small hospital serving its community.
It seems to me that the existing or a rebuilt Reedyford has a place as just such a hospital, and I hope that the Secretary of State will study the proposals by the hospital management committee with the utmost care and will think hard before giving his blessing to a plan to which there has already been widespread local opposition. I say that the opposition is widespread because in due course I shall have to present in this House a petition against these proposals which contains thousands and thousands of signatures.

2.25 a.m.

The Under Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): I see that the leader writer in a recent issue of the Colne Times quotes my hon and learned Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Waddington) as viewing the subject of today's debate as
a matter of immense local importance
and as agreeing
with those who think it is a matter which needs investigating very carefully before any final policies are passed".
I certainly agree with his view, and I am glad my hon. and learned Friend has had a chance of raising the matter today, albeit at this exceptional hour.
Perhaps I should begin with a little background history. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), who was then Minister of Health, published in 1962 "A Hospital Plan for England and Wales", it was envisaged that developments at Burnley General Hospital would enable more modern and improved provision to be made there to take over the work now done at Reedyford War Memorial Hospital, Nelson, and the Hartley Hospital in Colne. As forecast in the plan, a new maternity unit has since been provided at Burnley General Hospital, and the second phase of redevelopment—comprising a new outpatients department, accident departments, physiotherapy and X-ray departments—is due to start later this year. Further schemes to complete the redevelopment of Burnley General—providing new ward accommodation, operating theatres and supporting services—are


planned for the future. It was as a result of these future developments that it was foreseen in the hospital plan of 1962 that some thought would need to be given in due course to the future of the two hospitals that we are talking about today.
As my hon. and learned Friend has said, matters have been rather abruptly brought to a head by plans for the proposed new Calder Valley Road, joining this part of Lancashire to the M6. I think it fair to say that public opinion in the area has always recognised and shares my hon. and learned Friend's view of the importance of the new road development proposed by the county council, with its object of furthering local economic growth.
The feature that concerns us this morning is that part of the development which provides an intersection between the new road and the existing A682 Scotland Road. Nelson would, by means of this intersection, have direct access to the M6 motorway. The rub comes in the consequences for Reedyford Hospital. The line proposed by the county council as the most economical route provides for the intersection at a point which would render the hospital no longer viable. Alternative routes would, it is suggested, be more costly, less satisfactory from a traffic-flow point of view—since it would involve carrying the new road over the Scotland Road—and in any case likely to lead to intolerable noise levels, as a result of having hospital and a dual three-lane fast road so close together.
I should, however, emphasise the conditional, as things now are. We are here considering not decisions but only proposals. Stage III of the Calder Valley Road is now being considered, along with schemes from all over the country, for inclusion in the principal road preparation list. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment hopes to be able to announce an extension of this list within the next month or so. If this road scheme is included, Lancashire County Council will be able to carry out more detailed preparation of a scheme. So neither the precise line nor the date of construction is settled.
There will, I can assure my hon. and learned Friend, be plenty of opportunity for public comment on the detailed

scheme. There would almost certainly need to be a public inquiry, because no line is shown on the town map. At a later stage, compulsory purchase orders would have to be published and if there were substantial objections to these a further public inquiry would be necessary.
I understand that my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Development is due to visit the area next week to discuss the road proposals, and I imagine that he will be meeting my hon. and learned Friend among others. If the road has to involve the demolition of Reedyford War Memorial Hospital—and we cannot be certain about that until the more detailed preparation work to which I have already referred has been done—the hospital board will receive compensation to enable it to provide replacement facilities at Burnley at an earlier date than had been envisaged. The hospital board will also be required to hold public consultations if it is proposed to close or change the use of the hospital. That takes into account the outcome of these consultations in making its final recommendations to my Department, and both my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services and I weigh them in the balance with all the other factors involved before a final decision is taken.
This is equally true of the Hartley Hospital in Colne. I have seen a number of newspaper reports, and my hon. and learned Friend has spoken about the possible future of the hospital. The present position is simple: I have had no proposals from the regional hospital board and would not expect any in the near future, since that hospital's position would not come up for consideration until planning begins on the final stages of the redevelopment of the Burnley General—and that is some years ahead. In any case, as I have said, any proposals for the closure or change of use of Hartley Hospital will be subjected to the full rigours of public discussion before any decisions are taken.
The Government are very conscious of the invaluable rôle of voluntary effort in the life of such hospitals as the Reedy ford War Memorial Hospital and the Hartley Hospital, and of the loyalty and devotion that people feel for their local hospital. We are determined that as


far as possible these assets will not be lost. They must not be, because the service could not afford to be without them; nor could the health of the community as a whole. But, much as we would like to, we cannot avoid the economic realities. That is not to say that they are the only consideration, but they have, unavoidably, to loom large in our thinking.
My hon. and learned Friend referred to the speech that my right hon. Friend made last month to the Stratford and Redbridge division of the British Medical Association. My right hon. Friend has been taking a long hard look at the place of the local hospital in a modernised service. As he said, the foundation stone on the hospital side will continue to be the district general hospital, providing comprehensive services for populations of up to about 250,000 people. The reasons are well known. With the clinical advantages of having all the major specialities under one roof, the scarcity of money and of skilled men and women, and the increasing complexity of techincal services, some concentration to reap the economies of scale and to give the patient the best service possible within available resources is inevitable.
We simply do not have the resources of money or skilled manpower both to provide new hospitals—which we all know are badly needed—and to keep all the old ones going. It is often suggested that the life of the old hospital is finished, but sometimes the hospital at risk is a well-loved local hospital—as with Reedyford and Hartley Hospitals—and those who use it, whether doctors or the general public, find it difficult to see why it should not continue to serve the local community. That is why my right hon. Friend, in talking to the B.M.A., described himself as a healthy sceptic of over-concentration, and stated that there will continue to be a rôle for some local hospitals—the ones that we are now calling community hospitals—for patients who need hospital care but do not need all the expensive facilities of a district general hospital.

Mr. Waddington: Is my hon. Friend prepared to go so far as to say that that is possibly just the rôle that the existing Reedyford or a new Reedyford, built in Nelson, could perform? I am

not asking him to say that it is necessary that for all time in the future in Nelson there should be a hospital treating patients in the way in which they are treated at the present Reedyford, but may there not be a case for a community hospital in Nelson of the sort that the Secretary of State was referring to in that speech?

Mr. Alison: It is tempting to give an answer that will supply my hon. and learned Friend with precisely the reassurance that he seeks, but I cannot go as far as that at present. The concept of the community hospital is being evolved at present and is evolving on the lines that my right hon. Friend has set, but the aim is to show that there is a rôle, and will continue to be a rôle, for the small local hospital. The future of the Hartley Hospital is not in question at present, but that of the Reedyford is if the road proposed goes through on the present suggested line.
Against that background, with the hopeful view of my right hon. Friend of the whole concept of the community hospital, I hope that my hon. Friend will extract from an uncertain future what crumbs of comfort he is able to find, but I cannot be pressed to be more specific about the future pattern, which still remains completely unclear.

Mr. Waddington: I understand my hon. Friend's difficulty, because it is one with which I have been faced. Does he appreciate that all along this whole debate has been bedevilled by the plan for the new road? Am I entitled to assume that even if the new road involves the demolition of the present Reedyford Hospital the Secretary of State will not have a completely closed mind on the issue, and that it will still be open to try to persuade him that in Nelson there should be either a community hospital or, at the very least, a unit providing out-patient treatment and accident facilities?

Mr. Alison: My difficulty, as I have said, is that not only do we not know for certain whether the road will be agreed and finally set down on the hypothetical line which has been discussed; until that has been decided and determined, the Department cannot even have before it firm proposals from the regional hospital board, in whose gift it is to make


those proposals and to suggest how local facilities may be developed. It would be quite improper for me at this stage to make suggestions, not having had the proposals from the board, which should properly take the initiative in suggesting how a replacement for Reedyford's facilities might be developed.
I have already suggested that compensation will be payable to the board if Reedyford is demolished. One obvious advantage is that it would be able to bring forward the acute final stage facilities at Burnley earlier than would otherwise be the case. Whether at the same time it would want to propose the development of a community hospital in this part of the world would be up to the board. The concept of the community hospital has struck a sympathetic note with my right hon. Friend, who has stressed his desire to preserve local loyalties, and so on.
The real problem is to translate centralisation—producing major benefits for the mass of patients, and the maintenance of local facilities—into practical policy; what the size of the community hospitals should be, the types of patients they should care for, what staff and supporting services they should have, their relations with the district general hospital, and so on.
As my hon. and learned Friend has already heard, the community hospital concept is being elaborated in the Oxford region. The Department is already giving financial help to an evaluation of the idea of the community hospital. The evaluating process will last one or two years yet, but my right hon. Friend nevertheless hopes soon—before the evaluation at Oxford is complete—to be able to announce the Government's policy for small local hospitals. When he is able to do so it will become clearer which local hospitals may be retained and even developed to play a part in the future of the service. We shall not be able to keep all of them, but for some there will be a new vigorous life, perhaps in a new shape, with improved links between the hospitals and the community.
I am not yet able to add to what the Secretary of State said last month, but I can say that we are working hard on this matter, and I hope that it will not be very much longer before my right hon. Friend will be able to issue a firm policy statement on the development of small local hospitals of this kind, based upon the Oxford community hospital model that we are evaluating.
The subject of the debate is in many ways a microcosm of one of society's most difficult problems, namely, the necessity for change, but for change which all too often may at the same time hurt. The benefit of progress has often, alas, to be paid for in the loss of something cherished. The area represented by my hon. and learned Friend needs both new roads and new hospital facilities, both of which are real benefits. But one of the costs is the shadow of uncertainty, unavoidable in this context, which is cast over two well-loved local hospitals. Before any decisions are taken it is essential that the Ministers responsible for taking them are fully aware of the views of all the interested parties—the local authorities, local industry, the hospital authorities and the local townspeople. In due course we shall certainly be receiving proposals and representations from the regional hospital board.
The debate has been a very worthwhile means for making some of these views known and for spotlighting some of the conflicting factors involved. That is one reason why I am extremely glad, even in advance of the regional board's representations to us, that my hon. and learned Friend has succeeded in focussing our attention so early in the processes which arise in the development of roads and the associated hospital closures, so that we have the benefit of his views, which reflect most intimately and fully the views of his constituents in this situation. We shall study carefully what he has said and do our best to meet local wishes as fully and sympathetically as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at eighteen minutes to Three o'clock.